I'm struggling to see how this place could be any further from the India we're sold at school.
Except perhaps the volume level.
I am hungover and I have been trying to sleep it off but since I am a constant source of entertainment I keep being disturbed.
I delivered the first telling off of my life to Simar and accomplice for going through my bag. This is partly due to my conscience as I have a Kama Sutra in there. I have no idea what our hosts would think if they knew.
Edit
Despite constant requests for me to have 'one more little peg' I managed to get away with only having the hair of the dog, which despite my usual conviction that it is a ineffective phenomenon, did the job perfectly. After another half day of waiting for everyone to get ready to leave we managed to make it to the Pakistan-India border just five minutes late for the performance of the retreat. It was surprisingly entertaining, but mainly because of the ill-informed hatred that seemed to be true of both sides of the boarder. After the performance we around by the fence and they stood by theirs and we looked at each other. I think we were all waiting for something to kick off. It didn't.
We went back home via our hosts' old house and blazed about on a motorbike and drank thumbs up and admired small children. After a pretty despicable act of attempted peer pressure from Raju bhai (literally dragging me into the room where he wanted us to drink together) we went to visit the house of the man with the buffalo milk. He too offered me some whiskey as I'd drunk with him the day before. Again, it took far too much effort to get away without having one but eventually I got through to him.
We all drank buffalo milk and played some unsuccessful cricket in the dark. We had an increased party on the way home and me played carrom board and I was equally as bad as I'd been the night before, but with no intoxication to blame it on.
Laljeet, Sukhpreet, Sidak and I laid on the roof together and talked about the difference between the stars in Delhi and the Punjab. At 12 I was allowed to go to bed.
Photo edit:
Except perhaps the volume level.
I am hungover and I have been trying to sleep it off but since I am a constant source of entertainment I keep being disturbed.
I delivered the first telling off of my life to Simar and accomplice for going through my bag. This is partly due to my conscience as I have a Kama Sutra in there. I have no idea what our hosts would think if they knew.
Edit
Despite constant requests for me to have 'one more little peg' I managed to get away with only having the hair of the dog, which despite my usual conviction that it is a ineffective phenomenon, did the job perfectly. After another half day of waiting for everyone to get ready to leave we managed to make it to the Pakistan-India border just five minutes late for the performance of the retreat. It was surprisingly entertaining, but mainly because of the ill-informed hatred that seemed to be true of both sides of the boarder. After the performance we around by the fence and they stood by theirs and we looked at each other. I think we were all waiting for something to kick off. It didn't.
We went back home via our hosts' old house and blazed about on a motorbike and drank thumbs up and admired small children. After a pretty despicable act of attempted peer pressure from Raju bhai (literally dragging me into the room where he wanted us to drink together) we went to visit the house of the man with the buffalo milk. He too offered me some whiskey as I'd drunk with him the day before. Again, it took far too much effort to get away without having one but eventually I got through to him.
We all drank buffalo milk and played some unsuccessful cricket in the dark. We had an increased party on the way home and me played carrom board and I was equally as bad as I'd been the night before, but with no intoxication to blame it on.
Laljeet, Sukhpreet, Sidak and I laid on the roof together and talked about the difference between the stars in Delhi and the Punjab. At 12 I was allowed to go to bed.
Photo edit:
Punjabi kids love bhangra too!
Queue xenophobic comments
The Pakistani uniform was so much better. That's probably the reason for the xenophobia
Protecting the fence
Meet the Pakistanis
Sidak doing that horrible smile
And then not doing it because I told him off
"This runs across the whole border. It is a border that will always have to be this way."
Sukhpreet and family members
That smile again
Really nice mask for good luck outside Sukhpreet's old house in Fazilka
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