Along the way the bus was getting more and more packed.
We had the dubious pleasure of being invited back to someone’s house by a guy that sat down next to us (on the two person seat of course). We obviously didn’t take him up on his offer. He tried to convince us to come back by saying how rich he was and he lived only a few K’s away from Amritsar. It took us about another 2 hours to get to Amritsar from where he got off! Sometimes you just wonder what goes through people’s minds.........
7 ½ hours after we started out, bums sore from the hard seats and faces dirty from the dust being blown through the open windows of the bus, we arrived in Amritsar. A friendly Punjabi man (who turned out to be a policeman) who had sat next to us, helped us sort out a rickshaw for the final leg into the old city to get our hotel, which was a stone’s throw from the Golden Temple. It was manic as we jumped off the bus into the stream of traffic with our huge rucksacks and were lead by this guy to relative safety and a rickshaw. He hitched a ride to get his connecting bus and bid us farewell.
The place we had picked to stay at initially was a complete dump. We had a short walk along and looked at a couple more “Hotels”. Dipi had a look at the last one whilst I guarded the bags. We decided to stay on the basis that it had a small balcony that overlooked the main street. At least there was that. We got checked in and went out for a short walk amongst the mayhem, got some local vegetarian grub inside us (which was very nice) and headed back to the hotel to crash out. It was only in the morning that we realised the room we were in was not exactly the cleanest! The used condom under the bed kind of gave the game away! We obviously protested and they had the sheets changed and room cleaned out pretty smartly. Something that should be done prior to guests arriving you would think.
THE GOLDEN TEMPLE
That day we decided that we would see the Golden Temple. The Golden Temple is THE most important Sikh shrine in the world. Pilgrims flock from around the globe to come and bathe in its holy waters, eat from the free communal kitchen (which serves forty thousand pilgrims a day) and enter the Golden Temple itself making donations and offerings for the poor. No doubt some of the cash is spent elsewhere of course, although I will qualify that this is pure speculation on my front.
We dropped off our shoes at a locker room as you are not allowed to wear shoes within the temple area, covered our heads, washed our feet and in we went. It is such an amazing thing to view for the first time. I think that the pictures say it all......
The golden dome (gilded with 750kg of gold!) represents an inverted lotus flower, a symbol of Sikh’s devotees’ aim to live a pure life. The architecture, like the religion, is a blend of Hindu and Islamic styles but very different to both.
Dipi saying a prayer for the family (as instructed by her Masi) when we first got there.
Pilgrims bathing
Matt blending in
Hundreds of people are involved with kitchen duties every day. The conveyor belt started with the vegetables being prepared.
Thalis (big plates with partitions in them for rice. lentils, curry etc) being handed out
Thalis being washed up
Even the little ones lend a hand!
We walked around the marble walkway and then down the causeway, into the marble golden-domed temple in the middle of the sacred pool.
You can either just queue up or you can donate some money in return for some Halwa (a sweet food which is used as an offering for the gods) which we decided to do (you miss out on the long queue this way). Once an offering is made it is transformed into a sacred object and a small portion (known as Prasad) is returned as a blessing from the deity. The idea is that the blessing is then shared with your family but we tried it and it was a little too greasy (we later found out from Dipi’s mum that they make it very greasy to keep it moist for the day – the portion that is taken from your offering plate feeds the poor). Going inside the temple was like entering Aladdin’s cave but with an amazingly overwhelming atmosphere.
In the middle of the Temple, or the Hari Mandir Sahib, there is a square formed by railings (no pics allowed). In the middle of these railings there were large pots of money and people were throwing money into the middle all the time. Here they also keep the original copy of the Sikh Holy book under a pink shroud. This book is ceremoniously moved for the night into another part of the Temple Complex called the Akal Takhat. On the opposite side of where we entered there were three Sikh Priests (the book says there should be four, but we can only remember seeing three) playing traditional instruments and chanting in Gurmukhi from the Sikh Holy Book. The chants are broadcast out over speakers and fill every corner of the complex. I’m not a religious man, but The Golden Temple really is a beautiful thing to experience. You even had people fainting and struggling to stay upright as they were overcome by the atmosphere and holiness of the place. Some people would think that to be nonsense but we can completely understand as we felt something overwhelming there too. It goes down as a top thing to do for sure!
ATTARI BORDER CLOSING
After our uplifting Temple Experience we were found by one of the many touts selling Jeep space for the trip to the Border from the Golden Temple. We had previously promised to go back to another guy but we couldn’t find him and after inspecting this bloke’s vehicle we agreed to go along with him. We went off to do a few bits and arrived back at the agreed time. We stood there for a bit whilst matey boy went off to try and get some more seats filled before we left. When all concerned had turned up it looked like we were two people over booked. Matey boy wasn’t having any of it and insisted on shifting us all around. A couple of fatties were put in the front along with a small child and the rest of us were crammed in the back. Dipi ended up on my lap for the hour that it took to get there. I was studying the driver who seemed to be having trouble with the steering which was most comforting! There was something obviously wrong with the rack, but we still managed to weave our way along the roads without coming a cropper!
We were dropped off amongst the mayhem and tried to note where we were so that we could come back to the same spot. We then followed the crowds down towards the Indian/ Pakistan Border.
It took about ten or fifteen minutes to walk down and there was a real carnival atmosphere. Now in my mind I had visions of an old gate with barbed wire on it with a bunch of people from each side of the boarder hurling abuse at each other. That setting at least could not have been further from the truth. You can see in the photos how things actually where. In the middle you have the road that crosses the border, on the left you can see that gate which it passes through. You can also see here how we were seated up on a grand stand. You can see two Indians running down the road towards the gate waving the Indian (or Hindustani) flag. They were doing some kind of relay with the flags and there was a row of people queuing up to have a go!
In this photo you can see one of the grand stands on the Pakistan side of the border.
After the flag relay people got up and danced around to the Hindi Music Blaring from the speakers.
Periodically a guy turned on a microphone and would start shouting all sorts of stuff with the crowd joining in. He would shout something in Hindi and then the crowd would be shouting and chanting and shouting more stuff, very loudly!
This practically goes on all the time you are there. The sun then starts to set and we are heading towards more silliness.
The very tall moustachioed soldiers march (comically) down towards the border, where some more ‘ministry of funny walks’ action takes place as they close the gate/ boarder. All the time the shouting and chanting is going on, again very loudly! The flags get lowered and the people flood out of the place like a spilt can of multi coloured paint. A raucous affair that happens with thousands of people in attendance each and every day! Bonkers.
As we walked out and down the road our driver intercepted us near to where we were dropped off and pointed in the direction of our wagon. We noticed that the Tout that had crammed us all in the Jeep at the start of our journey was now here too. We had found out that he charged a fellow traveller double the ticket price, so we backed her up and got the old git to cough up what he had overcharged. The fellow traveller we are talking about is a woman who is clearly the older end of 60 and travelling on her own (brave woman!). Some people have no shame I guess. All the time this is going on we were surrounded by madness as so many people were vying for space and air time! With that sorted we jumped back into the jeep under a new and improved old-git-packing-system. I was now right in the back with a Sikh Family. Our driver was by now trying to negotiate our way out onto the road by making several dodgy manoeuvres, one of which resulted in us backing right into a rickshaw and pushing it a few feet down the road! Half way through the next million point turn, one very angry rickshaw driver came along side, shouted a load of abuse at our driver (which we all thought was funny) and then, walloped him through the open window! It was quite a relief to see our driver remain in his seat instead of getting out and rolling around in the dirt. Who knows what would have become of that! The rest of the journey back was uneventful apart from chatting all the way with the family I was sat with which was fun.
We had promised ourselves that we would go back to the Golden Temple after dark. Like the Taj Mahal it is worth seeing at different times of the day, so we went when we got back from the border closing. This time around the Temple Had a slightly different feel to it, it was a little more eerie. The chanting was now different, less jolly I guess. It’s difficult to describe! It was still an amazing sight of course.
We stayed until the Sikh Holy book was strangely and ceremoniously taken back to the Akal Takhat for the night and then went back to the hotel for an early night before the morning trip back to Delhi.
Buying train tickets in India is an experience. It takes lots of time and patience. We had visited the office earlier in the day and eventually got tickets after standing in one of two queues for 45 minutes while other people tried to push in from the side or pay people standing IN the queue to buy tickets for them. And this was only a small, and I believe, relatively civilised reservation office. Fortunately, we were so bowled over by our Golden Temple experience that it didn't phase us much...
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