Fruit juice and chipmunks

Just had an amazing lassi, there are loads of fruit juice cafes here. In Madras(Chennai) at the moment. Its dirty, busy, it stinks and there's people all over the place, sleeping on the street, washing their kids in the gutter and so on. For some reason I kind of like it though, its the most full-on Indian place I've been to yet. Only yesterday I met a man who was walking a chipmunk on a string leash. Street scene in Chennai: Honk honk!

Tomorrow I'm going up to Delhi (3hr flight - trains are booked up solid for the next month), then taking a train up to Pathankot to get to Dharamsala, the new home of the exiled Tibetan people. I wouldn't have minded the 40-hour train journey, but it seems I was highly naive in my "lets wing it and just rock up to the station to buy tickets on the day". I should have learned my lesson from China. The other travellers I've met here seem to be following quite a highly planned itinery, booking all their train tickets and accomodation several weeks in advance. What a bore to do all that though, you might as well be in work.