Jammu Jammu Jammu
Just keep saying the title of this blog entry and see how many people you upset, its kind of fun I do it to Rob all the time. So I guess you can guess the name of the place we are at right now, yup Jammu. Jammu is the second biggest city in Kashmir and is really the place where people come to go other places in India. Robs guide has nothing on Kashmir and my guide just says that Jammu is a city to pass right through. Normally the guides will give you a place to stay or something to see but my guide had nothing other then a paragraph about how you should just keep on moving through this city. Oh I forgot to mention something in all our blogs before this one and thats the situation up here in Kashmir. The Kashmiry people think that it would be best if they were there own country and don't want to be part of India, well India doesn't like that and Pakistan wants Kashmir so you can image there is some crazy stuff going on. Rob has blogged about how there are solidiers everywhere in Kashmir and that freaked us out when we first came here but now we are used to it. Well here is a funny story for you.
Wednesday we bought our tickets to Sringar in Delhi (almost 10 days ago)
Thursday while eating breakfast I pick up a paper and what is on the front page? Yup you guessed it, a bomb blast went off in Sringar. Now Rob and I had to decide what we should do. We of course went to Sringar and we didn't have any problems but it was freaky none the less. I guess as long as we just follow the blasts it will be fine. Anyways back to Jammu, Jammu, Jammu.
We got a Jeep like thing that had three seats in the front, three in the middle and 4 seats in the back facing each other. Rob and I got the front two seats with the driver. It was a super tight fit in fact if you were the guy in the middle you had to put one foot on each side of the stick shift (lol) and the driver would shift in between your legs. As you can imagine we were wishing we had a jock for the whole 10 hour drive. Ten hours to go 262km, you do the math because it isn't fast at all and man was that a crazy drive. We drove up and down mountain passes, really nice scenery but it wasn't ICBC aproved. We spent most of the time passing people on the right hand side of the road (they drive on the left)while going into a blind corner. Sounds safe doesn't it? Well the only way they can sort of be safe is they hammer the horn going into the corner. You have to remember the people going the other way are only going 25km/hr as well so you can sort of get out of the way. It was a crazy drive but the other option was taking a bus which would have taken at least 12 hours and the buses in this country isn't something to write home about. We passed many people in buses with their heads out the window feeding the pavement their dinner. So it may sound crazy but I think it was the best option, well I'm not really sure but I'm not going back to test the other options. Note to self if I'm ever up there again fly out of Sringar.
So how much did the trip cost? Well the jeep cost Rob 350 RS and it cost me 450. Why did it cost me more you maybe asking? Well its simple really the Jeep driver had a thing for Rob as Rob was the first to sit in the middle....lol just kidding thats not true. When leaving Sringar you have to pass through the army and if you are a forign national they want all the info from your passport. Ok fair enough right, we stop at this army checkpoint and Rob and I get out. I'm thinking that our luggage is gone with the Jeep but thankfully the driver stopped and waited for us. Well we go into this little hut and there is this army dude with a pen and paper, he doesn't speak very good english so Rob and I are always saying "pardon". Well Rob travels under the Canadian passport and I travel under my British. Rob gives him his details and leaves while the guy tells me to sit down. He gets this little smile on his face and says "So......(something I don't understand)....British", I respond with "yup". Now a dude with a gun walks in. The passport guy says "You give me British present". I play dumb...."pardon". He fills out some info about my passport and says again "YOu give me a British present". I play dumb again..."pardon". He gets up with my passport and says again "You give me a British Present", now I'm worried because the dude has a gone with him, I'm not in danger but I'm not feeling so safe with whats going on. So I play dumb again and I say nice and loud "Oh you mean you want money". He looks at me and gives me what I gave him "yup". I had over 100 Rs and hope thats ok. He gives back the passport and we leave.
The plan was to hit Jammu and head right to Amritsar that night but I was totally bagged and I didn't want to travel any further after we got off the jeep. We wondered around Jammu at 7pm not knowing anything about the city. We looked near the bus station for some rooms and we found some super budget rooms for 100-150 Rs but they were just a bed with dirty sheets, we have sleep sacks so we could have roughed it but I just wasn't in the mood so we continued to walk. We ran into the hotel that we stayed at and it was really nice and not a bad price so we dropped our bags and decided to stay at this place. We caught some dinner and headed to bed. Today we just wondered around the city as we didn't know what there was to see here and now we are just killing time waiting until our sleeper train leaves at 10:30 pm tonight.
Hope I was able to keep people in the loop.
G
Wednesday we bought our tickets to Sringar in Delhi (almost 10 days ago)
Thursday while eating breakfast I pick up a paper and what is on the front page? Yup you guessed it, a bomb blast went off in Sringar. Now Rob and I had to decide what we should do. We of course went to Sringar and we didn't have any problems but it was freaky none the less. I guess as long as we just follow the blasts it will be fine. Anyways back to Jammu, Jammu, Jammu.
We got a Jeep like thing that had three seats in the front, three in the middle and 4 seats in the back facing each other. Rob and I got the front two seats with the driver. It was a super tight fit in fact if you were the guy in the middle you had to put one foot on each side of the stick shift (lol) and the driver would shift in between your legs. As you can imagine we were wishing we had a jock for the whole 10 hour drive. Ten hours to go 262km, you do the math because it isn't fast at all and man was that a crazy drive. We drove up and down mountain passes, really nice scenery but it wasn't ICBC aproved. We spent most of the time passing people on the right hand side of the road (they drive on the left)while going into a blind corner. Sounds safe doesn't it? Well the only way they can sort of be safe is they hammer the horn going into the corner. You have to remember the people going the other way are only going 25km/hr as well so you can sort of get out of the way. It was a crazy drive but the other option was taking a bus which would have taken at least 12 hours and the buses in this country isn't something to write home about. We passed many people in buses with their heads out the window feeding the pavement their dinner. So it may sound crazy but I think it was the best option, well I'm not really sure but I'm not going back to test the other options. Note to self if I'm ever up there again fly out of Sringar.
So how much did the trip cost? Well the jeep cost Rob 350 RS and it cost me 450. Why did it cost me more you maybe asking? Well its simple really the Jeep driver had a thing for Rob as Rob was the first to sit in the middle....lol just kidding thats not true. When leaving Sringar you have to pass through the army and if you are a forign national they want all the info from your passport. Ok fair enough right, we stop at this army checkpoint and Rob and I get out. I'm thinking that our luggage is gone with the Jeep but thankfully the driver stopped and waited for us. Well we go into this little hut and there is this army dude with a pen and paper, he doesn't speak very good english so Rob and I are always saying "pardon". Well Rob travels under the Canadian passport and I travel under my British. Rob gives him his details and leaves while the guy tells me to sit down. He gets this little smile on his face and says "So......(something I don't understand)....British", I respond with "yup". Now a dude with a gun walks in. The passport guy says "You give me British present". I play dumb...."pardon". He fills out some info about my passport and says again "YOu give me a British present". I play dumb again..."pardon". He gets up with my passport and says again "You give me a British Present", now I'm worried because the dude has a gone with him, I'm not in danger but I'm not feeling so safe with whats going on. So I play dumb again and I say nice and loud "Oh you mean you want money". He looks at me and gives me what I gave him "yup". I had over 100 Rs and hope thats ok. He gives back the passport and we leave.
The plan was to hit Jammu and head right to Amritsar that night but I was totally bagged and I didn't want to travel any further after we got off the jeep. We wondered around Jammu at 7pm not knowing anything about the city. We looked near the bus station for some rooms and we found some super budget rooms for 100-150 Rs but they were just a bed with dirty sheets, we have sleep sacks so we could have roughed it but I just wasn't in the mood so we continued to walk. We ran into the hotel that we stayed at and it was really nice and not a bad price so we dropped our bags and decided to stay at this place. We caught some dinner and headed to bed. Today we just wondered around the city as we didn't know what there was to see here and now we are just killing time waiting until our sleeper train leaves at 10:30 pm tonight.
Hope I was able to keep people in the loop.
G
posted by Glenn Saqui at 2:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home