adventures with laundry, golden temple, indian children, our sikh brother, and a hari krishna

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Where to start? We're the local entertainment in our dorm/compound. We did laundry outside yesterday and today. Always get big crowds with that as we put on as little clothing as possible and get ourselves completely soaked while the women squat in their full saris and don't seem to get a drop on them. We wash them outside in the main tiled courtyard on the ground under the water spouts. The women watched, laughed, and finally one woman came up and took our laundry away (the stuff we'd already cleaned and were getting ready to rinse) and washed them for us - again - showing us the right way, beating it on the ground. One woman asked us with hand motions and broken english why we didn't use a washing machine. We just shrugged and went back to wringing out our clothing and laying it on the hot cement floor to dry, just like everyone else.

When we use our mini water filter we also get a nice semi-circle around us. The men are more interested in this one - they usually just kind of ignore us and watch from a distance, but not with the water filter! Filling nalgenes full and then dumping those into our water bag "camels" that fit in our big packs brings little boys and girls over to wash their hands and feet while they stare. Washing the hands and feet is a good excuse to get close to us without *acting* like that's their purpose.

The kids are the best. Especially the girls ages like 5/6 to 11/12. They're genuinely interested and like to practice their english. They stare, I stare back and smile, and then they shyly smile until one of us looks away. The little kids, too. The young boys are adorable and the children just old enough to walk constantly crack us up as they totter by, look up at us, stop, wobble, and either promptly lose their balance and sit down, or wobble by still craning their necks to look at us.

We stay in the foreigner barracks. It's free. There's a room lined with 10-15 cots and then there are three little side rooms. We're in the second side room; it has 3 beds. The first night a dude was in the other bed, but he was asleep by the time we got in at night and gone by the time we got up in the morning. The bed is now occupied by an Italian woman. There are plenty of male travellers. Some from Japan, Vietnam, America, Australia. Some travelling alone, some with others. The first night there was an east Asian woman. Today there is the Italian and an older woman who is "taking a break from her career" to travel - probably in her late 30's early 40's.

English woman is heading up to Dharamsala tomorrow, too, so we might tag along together for the travelling. We were planning on taking the 7-8 hour public bus, as there are no trains. She's looking into taking a tour bus with airconditioning. Sounds nice, but we'll have to see if the price is right first.

We're fans of the lassis - the mango lassis we just had at Neelam's restaurant were the best so far. Nice place. Huge portions. Arielle had some kind of chinese noodles that the Japanese man we were sitting with was having. I had thali - basically bread with a few different sauces to scoop - beans, curried tofu, and a cucumber sauce that would've been more cooling if i hadn't also had the lassi.

To all of you who said we would come back having lost weight - ha! notsomuch.

Last night we went inside the Hari Mandir, the golden temple at the center of the tank, and listened to and watched the men reading from the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book. Wonder what it was like before electricity. Candles lighting all of it inside... our book says 100kg of gold leaf make up the Hari Mandir. It's shiny like whoa. Beautiful doesn't begin to describe...

When wearing my salwar kameez and with my head and arms covered with the stohl it's nice to blend for a moment. Until they see my face and the blue eyes highlighted by the blue suit. Oh well. In our courtyard we don't mind just being the foreigners - the people who're staying there are used to us being weird, but in the temple it's nice to walk and not have people wanting to "take one snap" (photo) with us.

Went on a tour with our "Sikh brother" last night. He's lived and worked at the temple since he was a teenager. His beard is getting grey - don't know age. He showed us around the back streets and took us atop a 9 story building where we could see all of Amritsar. Hhen to a small Hindu temple where we looked around until accosted by an overzealous Hari Krishna who got into a slight disagreement with our friend and who kept talking and making us repeat things as he read from the Bhagavad Gita (sp?). We finally signaled to our friend that it was time to go, they had a slight disagreement, and we finally left. Not a fan of the overzealous clinging to god with all of one's might, no matter what religion it is.

Well. So that's that.

Okay, gonna try and look up info about the bus for tomorrow.

-molly

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