Day 10: TOW travel only again!

Day 10: 27th September
I had almost not slept at all. We pulled an all nighter just to play cards and I was feeling the strain in the morning .We had planned to leave Srinagar at 6 in the morning. 4 of us had slept at 4:30 in the morning. So somehow I managed to wake up and get myself into the taxi. We left at 6:30 from Srinagar and I was very sleepy. Though I remember seeing Soldiers on the way searching the fields and road side with mine detectors. I assumed they did this everyday in the morning.
As Akash and Adarsh were going to their native places, they wanted to buy apples. We could see lots of Apple gardens on the way. So we stopped by roadside and bought two cartons of Apples from one of them. We came across Jawahar tunnel which facilitates round the year connectivity. Hence the tunnel was heavily fortified and before entering we were asked a few questions and our taxi was superficially inspected.
With Amritsar being 500 km from Srinagar, it was going to take the whole day to reach Amritsar. Also with initial part of Srinagar - Amritsar highway being hilly, the journey would be a long one. We had breakfast at a roadside dhaba at 11 o clock, which only had Paranthas for breakfast.
I hardly remember this day as I was asleep. As usual we were stopped needlessly by a traffic inspector and again in spite of having all the documents intact, he wrote a challan. I wonder whether they were a counterfeit ones. Though one advantage of paying the bribe at the start of the journey is that other officers did not irritate us. Atleast 3-4 times we were stopped, but as soon as we showed the challan we were let through.
We reached the Punjab entry checkpost in the evening. All of us were hungry and we had some biscuits and chocolates while our driver went to pay the entry fee. A few tens of miles before Amritsar we came across a dhaba, everyone was hungry so we were waiting for food.
The food was not good at all and it took almost an hour to serve.
Finally we reached Amritsar at 9 o clock, and after much bargaining we found a place which was expensive considering its state.
After a full day travel and no sleep at all the previous day, I was very sleepy. But after 10 days cold weather, the sudden change in temperatures to the mid 30s was frustrating. Thankfully there was cooler in room so we slept comfortably.