On the Road Again

After a 6 week pause in India I hit the tarmac this morning, touching down in Jordan. The temperature was below 25C, a very nice change from the 40+ searing heat of Delhi. I've yet to do much apart from sleep (the 6:30am flight was precisely timed to prevent me from resting more than an hour last night) but I get the sense of a very friendly peaceful atmosphere walking around the streets.

My good friend Eero is due to arrive in an hour and will be joining me for the next couple weeks. I'm looking forward to his company. For now, I'll wander around until he gets here. Sitting in this internet cafe I can hear the evening's prayer from a nearby mosque. It's a soothing sound in the clear evening air.

Last week I took a trip to Amritsar and the India-Pakistan border, where every evening the guards put on an incredible show when lowering the flag and closing the border gates. I didn't manage to write about it (and really, a video is needed to do it justice) but some pictures are online here. It has become such an event that crowds gather to watch from grandstands and there is an emcee to lead the crowd in chants of "Hindustan! Hindustan!" The guards' marching is straight out of John Cleese's hilarious turn in the "don't mention the war" episode of Faulty Towers.

There was more to the trip, like the incredible Golden Temple (pictures alone unfortunately cannot begin to give a sense of the atmosphere) and an unplanned jaunt up to Dharamsala / McLeod Ganj (abode of the Dalai Lama in exile). I hope to pick up my pen a bit more often now I'm on the move again.