It was around 35 degrees, airless and dusty, when the bus rolled to a stop beside the river gorge. 14.30: time for prayers, and the Muslim clergyman (priest? cleric?) got up at the front behind the driver and started preaching. It was baking hot and I could feel the sweat trickling down my face as I tried to look respectful. Others clearly weren't bothered, as the sound of Eminem tinkled out of the headphones of an Indian man across the aisle.

The bus journey was around 900km from Srinagar to Delhi, leaving at 8.00 on Saturday morning and arriving at 11.00 the next day. The bus was old and basic, with hard seats and no air conditioning or fans, and full up. As we drove through Kashmir, there was a soldier every few hundred metres, and we were constantly overtaken and joined by military convoys. The soldiers themselves were friendly to us - smiling as we passed and relaxed when we had to get out at military checkpoints - but in the village we stopped at for breakfast, we saw a large demonstration because hostages had just been taken by the army.

We left Kashmir through a 2.5km tunnel and followed the winding roads through the Himalayas. The views were spectacular: of monkeys, rice terraces and huts so tiny you wondered how the occupants could scratch out a living - but the traffic was insane. No one seemed to make any allowances for the fact that the road was narrow, the precipice steep and crash barriers few and far between. Instead, drivers hurtled along, hooting and overtaking, ignoring the perky warning signs ("life is short, why make it shorter?", "this is a road not a runway", "do not overtake on bends lest death overtake you") and the memorials by the side of the road.