After an interestingly long night on a sleeper train, that turned up late and travelling in the Cattle Premier Class - which involves sharing a carriage with 6 people in 3 sets of bunk beds - and only two members of my party were in the same carriage as myself, it proved to be an interesting night. I had the top bunk which was a plank of wood wrapped in blue plastic with some sheets that may have been clean when the train was made, id estimate 1950s... andits was noisy too and Id drunk a bit too much beer at dinnertime with my curry that it became a little bit of a problem. If you need a loo on an indian train, a piece of advice, dont go! Its a hole in the floor which goes directly onto the tracks below. no support on offer and no no easy means not to fall down after your err doings...

About 5am we started drawing up into the mountains and with sunrise I got off my bunk, trying not to wake the entire carrige, did i mention there is no privacy either, and went and stat on the door steps looking out over the mountains.

We arrived in a place called Chitty Bang which wins the award for second most amusing place name after Hotel Good Times in Delhi. Left the train and boarded a Jeep Bus (ie a normal bus fitted with tractor wheels) for the journey to Daramasahala, which is a road to make people cry on - it has no edges, no fences and with a driver with what appeared to be suicidal tendences i was glad when the 4 hour journey was over.

No in ther land of the Dali Lama, we had lunch in a Vegetarian Tibetan Restaurant with the Dali Lama looknig down on us, then off we went to the temple for our Audience with the Dali Lama, which lasted 2hrs30. And was really good, even if I didn't understand most of it as it was mainly in Tibetan, the tea was good though... Then we explored his palace and its gardens.

I'm now sat in an Internet Cafe on some dodgy street in Tibetan administered India on the Kashmeer borders about to head off for dinner, another Vegetarian curry nodoubt...

Ten tomrrow the trekking begins off on the journey to a village called Bir, about 70 miles away... Fun...

No casulties yet BTW.