It turned out to be a group of 16 who reached the starting line at Bombay Central Station on the 18th.

Our local Indian contact, Ryan Correa, helped us get sorted out for mobile internet and even arranged a small band to see us off at the station.

They were quite a sight and the people outside the station were delighted.

At the station police were less so and made us understand that "it's not fair to play music outside a main station".

We moved the party to the street and had a brief dance festival with the local commuters.

We made it on to our first train which took 18 hours and landed us in the temple city of Dwarka, the most western point of our journey and once proclaimed as Krishna's capital city.

We ate and visited the temple at the town's centre before racing off to our next train, catching a bus to Jamnagar and setting off for a seven-hour trip arriving in Ahmedabad at 6am.

Fortunately the next train was an overnight to Amritasar via Jullunder.

Here we only had six hours before a 1am start for Udhampur via Jammu Tawi, the first being a sleeper.

This was the most interesting stop so far as we were able to take in the extraordinary border closing at Wagah.

This is the India-Pakistan border and each night before sunset a ceremony of pomp and chest beating plays out before crowds of the respective nations, each sat in the thousands in grandstands flanking the border gates.

Like any true derby match they try to out do each other in song and chant, the soldiers compete for uniform and speed of goose-stepping march.

Ladies in the crowd are urged to run back and forth holding their countries' flags aloft before a boisterous 'dance-off'.

Once the gate was safely closed we made a quick dash to the Golden Temple, Sikhism's equivalent of Mecca, to spend a few hours luxuriating in the calm of the intensely spiritual place of pilgrimage and enjoying the simple beauty of symmetrical design centring round the elaborately carved and gilded shrine set in the huge calm body of the pool.

From there it was tome to lug bags to the station and have another brief sleeper spell 'til 6 am following a change at Jamu Tawi for a draughty local train to Udhampur.