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Published: September 20th 2009
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Got up around 10am and had breakfast before setting off on a day sightseeing in Amritsar. A driver took us near the Golden Temple (Harminder Sahib), parked a bit away, walked us down the road some then pointed us towards the temple and went back. We wandered up and managed to figure things out. After depositing our shoes we had a pleasant wander round. Had to queue for a bit to get into Sri Darbar Sahib where the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji is during the daytime but moved through eventually. Felt a young man in a black shirt may have been following us but soon lost him!
We went through the museum and saw lots of gruesome art. Lots of killing/beheading paintings. Saddest one was showing babies being taken, cut up and then the pieces being handed back to their poor mothers - sometimes strung as a garland.
We then left the museum, got our shoes and used the toilet where the attendant wanted to buy my compact mirror/pop out brush. She seemed quite fascinated by it - this is the new bargaining tool for any possible sticky situations that we might find ourselves in.
From here
we went to visit a Hindu temple (felt we'd done well wandering the streets to find the car and driver again). This temple was much quieter and we sat on a step for a while and watched the jumping fish and the birds before heading back to the car.
Our final stop was another temple that had a pathway of statues spread over different levels, including a tunnel to crawl through and a channel of water to paddle through - not unlike a carnival fun house. Towards the end we had to kneel down and an old man used a paste to make a dot on our forehead (tilak/tilaka) and gave us some coconut. The young boys in front of us seemed quite amused by us and some young girls asked to take pictures with us when we were collecting our shoes, which we happily did.
After returning to our hotel for lunch, we collected our bags and walkd across to the station. Nearly died of shock to see the train already in the station. Bought Indian Cosmo then boarded. The train was a bit older than the one on the way but still comfortable enough. Bit strange
that the toilet just goes straight down to the track which you can see beneath you. Breezy.
After dinner my tray managed to vibrate off the table into my lap, spilling rice and sauce (luckily not much sauce) and sending my spoon clanging onto the floor. I quickly picked it all up and as Sarah helped get the rice out my lap the train guy walked past and just shook his head at us. We then went on to laugh hysterically which only got worse as we tried to stop. Ended up with tears running down my cheeks and my stomach hurting from laughing so hard.
Having had a positive and timely start, it all went downhill as we neared Delhi and ended up stopping and just sitting for ages due to some technical fault. Got very bored and started to think we'd never get there and would have to ration the little sweet I had in my bag, but finally we got going and slowly rolled into the station more than 2 hours late, just after 1am.
Since it was so late, taxis were more expensive and there were lots of people offering us transport. A
guy guided us to the tourist office who arranged a taxi for us as this was safer as their drivers are all registered, and just paid a bit extra. When we got in everything was fine and Sarah didn't have to make a scene like sh was planning to if our bags had gone missing or anything.
General thoughts for today
- really really can't rely on trains
- compact mirror/brush valuable tool
- Indian Cosmo presumes every girl has a boyfriend
- feeling a lot more comfortable getting/walking around and proud for managing the trip fine
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