Sundown in Amritsar

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Jarrod and I caught the train from Jammu to Amritsar which is the hub of the Sikh religion. The founder of Sikh religion made it up in 1577 when he wasn't happy with either the Hindu or Muslim religions. We stayed two days, and I really enjoyed the feel to the town and could have stayed longer.

We went to the Golden Temple in the evening when it's all lit up and although it was quite busy with pilgrams and visitors the atmosphere was still quite peaceful and serene. We had to wash our feet in shallow pools before entering the Temple, which was refreshing after walking on them all day long. There is a pond around the golden temple itself and people bathe in the holy water. Women have a special section for themselves, but the men buck down to their knickers in public. It's suprising how many layers of clothing they wear... not that I was watching them too closely ;-) Adding to the atmosphere are four preists that chant all day long over the loud speakers the texts from their holy book. It's a shame it's they speak in Punjabi so we couldn't understand what they were saying.

After leaving the temple it's like day and night walking back onto the hustle bustle of the street. It was dark so we hailed down an autorickshaw to take us back to our hostel. About two blocks from the temple we came across about 30 men arguing in the street and before we knew it fists were being throwen, bright pink turbans are being unravelled and a man is thrown agaist the windshield of our rickshaw. Jarrod and I are a bit unnerved, we don't really want to be a part of the brawal, yet our rickshaw driver doesn't seem phased. He would have been happy to wait out the fight and maybe would have even run over a person once they were knocked to the ground to get through, but Jarrod and I asked to go down another street to get back... but as soon as the tustle moved to the side slightly and there was a break in people, our rickshaw took off again. Our driver was probally the fastest and craziest yet. He told us his rickshaw was two years old (most are likely 30 years) and you could tell: no scratches, new stickers and it had power. He went so fast people on the street saw him coming and would jump out of the way! But it was fun and we made it to the hostel safely.

At sundown we took a shared taxi mini-van 30km to see the border closing between Indian and Pakistan. The mini-van was gutt-less and sputtered up the hills, we wished we had the autorickshaw driver! Closing the border is quite the production, about 3000 people were there. The grandstands were full of patriotic Indians on our side and Pakistani's on the other. In the crowd there was a lot of flag waving and singing - the enthusiasium of the crowd reminded me of a Canadian hockey game. The guards kick their legs above thier heads and stomp the ground with such exaggaration trying to out do the other country. I really hope the guards streached their legs before the ceremony or there's bound to be some injuries. Maybe at lunch time they practice gymnastics and have a streaching bar in the lunch room. They lower the flags so slowly and once the flags are down they fold them in 5 seconds flat. It was a good show of how much Indians really love their country.

Next we're off to the Pink City: Jaipur in Rajasthan. We've bought our train tickets.... 19+ hours in sleeper class, our first REAL train experience.

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Comments

[gail & ken]

traveling with you
love the pictures! love the writing! I'll never never complain about our growing Richmond traffic again after seeing the congestion in Delhi in the cycle rickshaw! 'What's wrong with this picture ?' very curious!