Attari-Waga border + Chandigarh

We have done a lot of things since last I wrote anything.

One thing is going to the Attari-Waga border - the only border between India and Pakistan. We had heard it was a spectacular border closing ceremony every evening and were curious about it. It truly was spectacular.

Remember how I said I enjoyed being a woman here in India? Well the border just made me love it even more. When we got to Attari, we met an older American couple from Hawaii and decided to go together. We saw that the men and the women had split into two different queues, and we decided to do the same. So Linda (the American) and I went to stand with all the Indian women. After a while, a little boy approached us and said that we were standing in the wrong queue, and that there was a separate queue for foreigners, and told us to follow him, but if it's one thing we know we should never do in India, it's to follow strangers. Later we found that there really was a separate stand for foreigners, but boy am I happy we didn't stand there, because I wouldn't have experienced half of what I experienced there if I had been sitting with the foreigners. I'll tell you about it.

All the local women were really friendly and smiled and kept talking to us, mostly in Hindi or Punjabi, but even their English wasn't comprehensible. All of them wanted us to sit with them. There were loads of people, all there to see the weird closing ceremony!

Some women went down to the road to hold and walk with the flags, so I asked a guard if we could do the same, and he said: Yes, please go and do it! And only women could do this, so I was again very happy to be a woman. After a while many of the local women were standing all over the road and started dancing. The guard wanted to tell us something, so I walked over to him, and he said: You can go and dance to if you want. So Linda and I went, as the only two foreigners, to dance Punjabi with all the local women, and they all wanted to dance with us, take pictures with us and enjoy themselves together with us. Afterwards, I was amazed over how I managed to dance for half an hour in that heat! But it was great fun and definitely something couldn't have done if we had been sitting with the other foreigners.

After a while the closing ceremony started and it was amazing. I highly recommend you to go there, if you go to Amritsar. It's only 40 minutes away by car. And now I can brag about actually having SEEN Pakistan haha!

After Amritsar, we went to the capital of Punjab: Chandigarh. We were there for two days. Chandigarh is a bit different from what we've seen in India so far. It's more modern, and slightly cleaner, or rather, less disgustingly dirty than what we've seen so far. Nothing special about it. There's a nice rock garden there, which we visited. I'll upload the pictures later. I'll upload all pictures when I get home.

Yesterday we spent the whole day in Delhi, and now today is our last day in India. Tonight we're going home. Our flight leaves at 1am. It's been an amazing journey, no doubt! But now it feels rather good to get home, take showers and actually feel clean afterwards, have access to high-speed Internet again, and escape the smell and the loud traffic, to name a few things.