It's well known that McLeodGanj is the home of the Tibetan government in exile. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama himself, the Buddhist spiritual leader of Tibet, made the journey from Lhasa to India over the Himalayas back in 1959 when they began to fear for his safety after the Chinese invasion, and India have [...]
Bhagsu and Dharamkot consist entirely of hills and the trick is to try and minimise the hillage between where you're staying and the nearest beer. We massively failed at the first attempt and ended up staying in what was basically a small flat in Bhagsu at roughly the height of Everest. At least that's what [...]
There's only one reason to go to Dharamsala and that's to get a bus straight to McLeodGanj. Fact. And the best way to get there from Amritsar is to bus it to Pathankot first and change buses there, and it was there I realised that I was sans phone. Ohhhh fuck. I mean, it wasn't [...]
As I said in the last post, if you loiter long enough someone will approach you and bundle you into a tuk tuk to head to the Wagah border closing ceremony. If you're foreign, take your passport. You'll be dropped about a kilometre from where it takes place and you'll need to clear three security [...]
There's nothing like waiting for a train in India to make you feel like you've got three heads and 10 metre tentacles instead of arms. There I was, sat on my bag on the platform at Bareilly, when someone asked me where I was from. I looked up. Guys, I was surrounded. Literally 360 degrees [...]
All over India when you catch a train, sometimes a group of transgenders, or hijras, will board and ask men for money. They clap loudly, touch men on their heads and the men are expected to give the transgenders ₹10. I've seen them enter shops or restaurants and ask for money. What I've never seen [...]
So these living root bridges we'd come to see are actually located in a valley which is easily accessible from Cherrapunji. You can do it in a day and domestic tourists from Shillong do indeed do this, but we'd heard you should really spend a night or two down there to get the most out [...]
I'd first heard about the Living Root Bridges of Cherrapunji on Atlas Obscura's website and tucked that little nugget of awesome away in the back of my mind for when I finally made it to India. It's one of those places that folks either haven't heard of, or know of it and desperately want to [...]
I love tea which is slightly stereotypical given my nationality, but then again I'm lesbian with short hair, several P!nk albums and a penchant for Superdry underwear so stereotypes are kinda my thing. I was totally thrown by chai when I first arrived in India though. When I was handed a tiny plastic cup of [...]
Seriously, Darjeeling. You better be worth the Hell Train I endured to get to you. Okay, actually the train only went as far as New Jalpaiguri, affectionately known as NJP because New Jalpaiguri clearly has way too many syllables, then it was a shared jeep from there to the town itself. That's fine though, that [...]
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