making use of that one-year multi-entry visa for India!
My many visits to India over the years had still left me with some gaps to fill, so I’d booked myself onto a guided tour of Kashmir & Ladakh. When the Pahalgam incident ratcheted up the tensions between India and Pakistan in June the company briefly threatened to cancel the tour – and then tensions in the Middle East led to a closure of Iran’s airspace threatening my Helsinki-Istanbul-Delhi flight (finally re-routed around the coast and so requiring a refuelling stop in Doha)- so I was thankful when I arrived back in India that all seemed to be back on track. ]I’d come a few days early so that I could fit in a quick visit to Amritsar before heading to the mountains, as a very messy conflict there back in 1984 (Operation Blue Star), when I’d travelled overland across Asia and planned to visit the Golden Temple, had led to its closure. So finally, 41 years later than planned, I arrived by bus in Amritsar, grabbed a night’s sleep in my £2.50 a night hostel, took my scarf fr...