Diwali

Pity the stray dogs of Delhi! I've known some good Bonfire Nights and enjoyed several 4th of July celebrations; but you ain't seen - or heard - nothin' in the fireworks department until you've experienced Diwali in an Indian city.

The noise of exploding firecrackers and showering fireworks went on for hours, long into the night. Buildings were bedecked in strings of twinkling colour and candles burned inside and outside every home (a girl has to be careful not to set her sari alight!).

We celebrated the festival of lights with our taya and tayi - our uncle and aunt. Pumi Aunty is the one who has masterminded our trip here, orchestrating the visits to our many different relatives, clucking round us like a fierce mother hen. If she doesn't know the answer to our many queries, she always knows the right person to ask and is on her phone in a second. She's almost 80 years old, about four feet high, formidable and astonishing and we adore her. Anand Uncle is quiet and gracious and has welcomed us so warmly.

We were each invited to light a diya (candle) to mark the occasion and helped place garlands of marigolds around the framed photographs of relatives who have died. Gifts were exchanged. Then we shared yet another wonderful meal together.

We drove home through a city exploding in celebration (unless you're a petrified dog, that is); and lingered on the rooftop terrace of our hotel, enjoying the spectacle in the sky, the noise of the shouting and the crackers below. We finally fell asleep despite a still deafeningly loud Delhi. And as I write this the following morning, there are still intermittent explosions outside.

November 5th will never be quite the same again.

Marigolds and Roses

Today I encountered some of the most extraordinary kindness I have ever known.

Two ladies - who had never set eyes on us before - decked out their home in a multitude of marigold garlands, and hired carpets and covered chairs to furnish their outdoor space. All in our honour.

They greeted us with garlands of scented fresh roses and lavished on us generous gifts. They prepared a banquet of home-cooked food for us. Then they presented us with a large cross-stitch picture that they and other relatives had jointly worked on for several months.

I can barely comprehend such generosity toward strangers. Except we're not strangers. We're family. And never was that fact more abundantly demonstrated.

Thank you, Aruna and Renu.

Kith and Kin

I've journeyed to India with family to visit family.

I've come with relatives well-known - my husband and sister-in-law and niece - to visit family members barely-known or never before met.

It's an extraordinary thing to be so far from Dixon Hill, in a country so alien and different, and yet to find ourselves surrounded by people to whom we belong. We haven't felt like strangers in this land. Instead we've come home.

The experience has given me a deeper appreciation of the bonds of kinship. I'm grateful to be intimately connected to these people in another part of the world. They've welcomed us as their own and showered us with kindness.

I thank them from the bottom of my heart. I'm honoured to belong to them and to India.

The Journey to Shimla

Travelling by train is a great way to see a country. And when that train journey is almost twelve hours long, you get to see quite a bit.

Yesterday we left the chaos of Delhi and headed north-east....across the plains to begin with, then up into the foothills of the Himalayas. We set off early, braving the seething swarm of humanity that jostles in and around New Delhi station during the morning rush hour.

The Shatabdi Express carried us off to Kalka....four hours of pressing our faces to the glass to take in as much of this amazing country as possible. We travelled through farmland, past villages where every building appeared to be crumbling away. Saw children taking off the clothes they stood in to scrub them on a railway platform and hang them to dry in the sun. Saw mud huts and motorbikes; people defecating by the wayside; swathes of orange marigolds being grown for holy blessings; pigs and people scouring waste heaps; old men in turbans and brightly-coloured cloths, sitting cross-legged; young men spitting copiously onto the railway tracks below; precious cows and stray dogs; women working the land in companionable groups; ploughs pulled by oxen; folk carrying impossible loads on their heads; beauty and squalor, rags and riches, side by side and jumbled up together.

At Kalka, we switched to the Himalayan Queen - the 'toy train' that winds its way up a single gauge track, high into the cool air of the mountains. The little carriages were crammed. Occasionally, the train would pause long enough at a station for everyone to tumble out and buy crisps and hot samosas and stretch their legs; or to at least lean out of the window and take refreshment from the chai wallah, touting his tea along the length of the train.

We hairpinned our way up and up and up for five-and-a-half long hours....and the views were breathtaking all the way. Eventually, having climbed to 8,000 feet, the train pulled into Shimla - a Shimla that seemed even more crowded and more chaotic than the Delhi we'd left behind. As darkness closed in, we began the last, hour-long leg of our journey by car, moving by fits and starts through the thronging streets that once were the summer capital of the British Raj.

And so the second part of our adventure began.