Advertisement
Published: February 8th 2009
Golden Temple
Amritsar is home to the most holy Sikh site, the Golden Temple.
On first glance, the people of Amritsar appear quite different from some other parts of India. They are taller, broader and, as you would expect Sikh's to be, hairier.
Unlike Rishikesh, Amritsar attracts many more India tourists than foreigners so we found ourselves once again at the centre of a certain amount of staring and attention. The town itself is relatively unremarkable except that when strangers approached us, they often just wanted to ask where we were from and welcome us.
The Golden Temple complex is a serene place. There is no admission fee. We are simply required to check in our shoes at the one of the entrances and cover our heads.
As is the case with all Sikh temples (so we are told) there is a kitchen that serves free food: chapattis (round Indian flatbread) and dahl. This particular kitchen serving up to 30,000 people per day. There is even a free dormitory where foreigners can stay for up to three nights.
This seems all very strange. In a country where people have constantly demanded a
baksheesh (tip) for anything,
east entry
golden templeeven something as simple as directions, it is totally foreign to us. Sort of like the person beating you suddenly embraces you in a big warm hug.
The temple sits in the water of a holy pool where people come to take a cleansing dip or drink. There is even a special building that hangs out over the water where women can swim in privacy.
Beautiful music and singing eminates from the Golden Temple 18 or so hours a day. It is produced by a group of musicians in the centre of the temple who take turns singing hymns.
The musicians are surrounded by pilgrims, some sitting cross-legged, reading hymns and meditating wherever there is room on the floors, others who simply pass through the temple, pausing for a few minutes to watch and listen.
Many people stop to chat with us as we circle the temple and take photos. Proud men that enjoy telling us about the temple and the history of the Sikh people. One couple introduces us to well-spoken daughters pursuing university studies.
The more we learned about Sikhism, the more we liked it. Sikhs believe in the equality of all humans
regardless of caste, race or gender.
Devoted Sikhs pursue the realization of truth and meditate to attain enlightment or union with God. The influences of ego, anger, greed, attachment, and lust, caused by separation from God, must be overcome by intense meditation and devotion.
The more strict Sikhs do not cut or remove any of their hair which results in more than a few whiskered ladies.
"God gave us hair," one man explains to us, "and it is beautiful. Why cut it?"
Closing-of-the-Border Ceremony and Hindu Temple
The other highlights of our stay in Amritsar included a trip to the India-Pakistan closing of the border ceremony and an unexpected visit to a special Hindu temple.
Because of tensions between the two countries, the only land crossing between India and Pakistan open to the public is near the small town of Wagah, about 30 km from Amritsar.
The common way for tourists to get to the ceremony is to join a share-taxi, typically a mini-van outfitted for 7 passengers, in Amritsar to take them to the site. So we find a share-taxi driver on the street, agree on a price and arrange to meet
see the fish?
golden temple him at 3:30 pm at which time we will leave for the border ceremony that starts around 4:30.
We are back on site at 3:20, find the driver and he takes us to his van parked a short distance down the street. We are told to get in and the driver walks back to the taxi stand area. As with all transactions in India, we're never quite sure what we've agreed to and how it will turn out.
By 3:45 we are starting to get concerned as it is still just the two of us waiting in the van and we know that the driver is not going to waste the space and we don't know how long it will take to get to the border.
Finally, a neatly-dressed, 20-something India woman joins us in the van and the three of us wait. We say hello and she tells us that we are just waiting for her "hubby." She calls him from her mobile phone to confirm this and, yes, he is on his way. By 4:10 or so, the husband arrives and we depart.
So now Matt and I are wondering what is up. The
van is not full and we are most likely going to be late or miss the border ceremony. I'm already preparing my wrath: in India, it sometimes helps to make a great show of anger in order to motivate people to not take you for a sucker and either deliver the service that has been agreed to or at least realize that you are not going to pay them for nothing. I am also feeling frustrated because I don't really want to stay a whole extra day in Amritsar just to try to catch the border ceremony tomorrow.
In the meantime we make small talk with this pleasant couple from Delhi who are in Amritsar on a short holiday. Both of their families are from this state, Punjab. I manage to determine that they follow both Sikhism and Hinduism. They are celebrating their first wedding anniversary.
As we approach the border, the road is increasingly choked with transport trucks, share-taxis, rikshaws and private cars. The border is only open from 8:30 until 4:30, so if a truck doesn't get processed in time, it and it's driver will wait out until morning. The share-taxis, rikshaws and private cars are
delivering spectators like us to the border-closing ceremony.
Our driver takes us as far as he can into the melee. By now it's after five and we are thinking that we are way late for the ceremony. As we are rushing out of the van and preparing to race off to the border, the driver informs us we have to leave our bags in the van since they only allow cameras into the area, no bags or purses.
We hurriedly root through our bags to retrieve cameras, wallets and whatever other valubles that will fit in our pockets. Our male fellow passenger hastily punches the driver's mobile phone number into his mobile in case we have troubles finding the van on our way back. And the four of us take off into the crowd.
As we squeeze between trucks, weave through crowds of people and dodge boys selling postcards, I'm hoping that I'll see that taxi driver and my bag again. It's a funny thing about India, despite the fact that most shopkeepers and taxi drivers will happily overcharge us by double, triple or more, the occurance of petty theft is surprisingly low. Somehow if you cheat
someone out of their money by means of your superior bargaining skills, it's ok, but to actually steal from someone is not. Go figure.
Upon questioning our companions, we learn that the reason the van is not full is that the couple have actually arranged a tour. After the border ceremony, they are going to visit some temples. Interesting, I wonder what that means for Matt and I?
After a couple of kilometers, we approach a grand archway just beyond which the ceremony is already underway. There is a huge, excited crowd of mostly Indian men vying for a view. Our female companion grabs my hand and pulls me through the crowd and, being female, we are allowed to cross the rope, run across a stretch of road to a viewing area that's a little closer to the action.
Truth be told, with the exception of a few VIP spots lining the road, there are no good views to be had of the ceremony. It's a typical example of hasty or poor planning that we often come across in this part of the world.
The very popular closing of the border ceremony is performed each afternoon
by the Indian and Pakistan guards. The guards, wearing elaborate headdresses, make a great show of stomping around, raising their legs high in the air and slamming them down to the ground. A master of ceremony on either side barks out commands, accompanied by cheers and shouts from both audiences.
After a few minutes of stomping, yelling and marching, both flags are lowered simultaniously and the ceremony is over. I still don't know for sure if the ceremony is very short or if we arrived minutes before the end. The crowd swarms the street and we walk back to find the guys. We find them easily and the four of us walk back to the van that, thankfully, has not disappeared.
Matt and I question the driver as to what we are doing next, trying to strike a balance between not inconveniencing this couple too much but not getting stuck spending the evening driving around town, going to temples we are not interested in seeing.
Naturally, we are assured that everything is "on the way" and it will "only be a few minutes." Where have I heard this before? So we sit back and try to go
with the flow.
We arrive at a Hindu temple and the couple asks us if we would like to join them, we politely decline and they take off. It's dark by now, I'm getting hungry and not satisfied to sit in the van, we wander over to the entrance.
Several minutes have already passed and I'm wondering if they are almost finished, I mean, how long does it take to make an offering, say a prayer, get blessed? We spot the couple outside the temple, walking back from buying sweets and a basket of offerings (a coconut, flowers, sweet rice) from nearby vendors. They haven't even started! What have they been doing? I think impatiently.
The woman asks me again if I would like to join them just as I'm thinking about what an ungrateful stick-in-the-mud I am being, so I say yes and step out of my shoes, leaving them with Matt and the driver.
Hindu temples in general are colourful, busy, noisey places. They sort of reflect what India is like. Not places for quiet contemplation, but rather interactive prayer and entertainment.
We enter the large, colourful main room of the temple which
is lined with numerous status, alters and decorations; there is music and people sitting on the floor in various positions, chanting and praying. It's too much to take in all at once, but I am saved from trying as we take a left and turn up a narrow staircase.
We quickly walk along corridors, through rooms, up and down stairways and ramps, passing hundreds of statues of all sizes and styles of the various Hindu dieties. From dressed up dolls to ceramic statues; some behind glass, some life-size. As we pass, both of my companions reach out with their right hands, to quickly touch the bases of select statues, followed by a touch to the forehead and heart, lips moving quietly in prayer.
I am reminded of a funhouse: bright colours, Hindi music blasting too loudly from speakers, sharp corners, narrow hallways. No corridor is straight; no staircase even. At one point we are on a suspended walkway; another, we are on our knees, crawling along a dirty floor into a papermache-esque cave. The route doubles back on itself several times and we see other visitors, families and couples, completing the circuit. I wonder if it is actually
a maze of some kind.
The randomness of the design is bewildering to my Western mind. There appears to be no particular rhyme, reason, order or symmetry to how this has been assembled. Mind you, this is the first Hindu temple of it's kind I've been in and I certainly have no more than a basic understanding of the ins and outs of the Hindu religion, so who knows?
We pause once to roll up our trousers before climbing over a half-wall and stepping into a sloping, uneven "stream" half a metre deep and several metres long. If the cow-udder-like sculpture hanging from the ceiling is what I think it is, I believe the stream represents purifying milk from those oh-so-holy cows.
We pause again in another "cave," to receive a pooja (a prayer or blessing in the form of a spot of orange paint on the forehead) from an old man sitting cross-legged in another area. We queue, or should I say crowd, with other visitors, for our turn in a half-bent position so as to not bump our heads. My companion offers the coconut and sweets in return.
By the time we decend back
Pakistani guards
border closing ceremony down the stairs to the main hall, I am laughing with surprise and disbelief at this experience. We complete a final circuit of the main hall, touching statues, my female companion lingering over a a couple of lingams (representing sexuality and fertility), receiving another pooja and a handful of sweet rice, pausing once more to honour a weirdly lifelike statue of the woman, now dead, who designed the temple.
Bare feet now filthy, we exit the temple, retrieve our shoes and return to the van. I found out later that the driver tried to get Matt to pay extra for visiting the temple that we hadn't wanted to go to in the first place. Oh India!
It is somehow decided that we will be dropped off back near our hotel instead of joining them for the rest of their temple visits. We are grateful. After a short drive, we bid farewell to the couple, and wander off to find some dinner.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.193s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 13; qc: 65; dbt: 0.0861s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
