For Rob’s birthday, we hopped on a bus, another bus, and then a train to go to Amritsar, which is a big tourist destination in the Northwestern state of Punjab. Punjab is famous for having some of the best (and most recognizable to an American) North Indian food, such as Tandoori chicken. The two things to see in Amritsar are the Golden Temple and the Pakistan-India border closing ceremony. And that’s about it. We arrived in the evening to a lovely old estate house that was converted to a guest house, and ran into a group of Australians having a late dinner on the patio. It turns out that one of the ladies was married to a submarine commander in the Royal Australian Navy. He served back in WWII, and then later somehow ended up becoming buddy-buddy with the Dalai Lama, so she goes to visit McLeod Ganj every few years to help with the hospital up there and say hello to His Holiness. She had quite an amazing story, and we had hoped to visit with her more, but unfortunately we missed seeing them again. People tend to only stick around in Amritsar for the minimum number of days necessary.
The next morning, we woke up and packed up our little bags to go see the famous Golden Temple. This place is huge, magnificent, and is the holiest site for the Sikh religion. The Golden Temple is actually a smallish shrine two stories high, with its walls completely covered in glimmering gold paint. I have no idea how much of it is made of actual gold. But it looks pretty amazing. It’s surrounded by a marble pool, with a marble bridge leading to the entrance over the water. Most of the people in line to go into the Golden Temple were carrying some kind of a syrup-covered cake thing in as an offering, and as far as we could tell they just bought it at a window, and then carried it over the bridge to dump it into a garbage bin at the front door of the Golden Temple. It looked very gooey. The water is reputed to have healing powers, so we dipped our feet in it, just in case. Surrounding the pool is a wide marble walkway, which is in turn surrounded by a large white wall with various buildings and towers thrown in. They must have millions of visitors each year, because we saw thousands and thousands of people milling around, and this place is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. One cool thing we did was to visit their free community kitchen (you just drop in a donation as you can afford, but it’s not required). They have these large halls with rows of burlap fabric laid out for you sit down on, cross-legged. You bring in a plate, a bowl, a mug, and a spoon, and then you sit down and wait for these guys to stroll down each aisle and pour you some soup or curd or tea, and they give you a chapathi (kind of a mini-tortilla) and some vegetables and lentils. For being able to serve something like 100,000 people a day, it actually tasted pretty decent. On our way out, we saw some of the enormous pots they cook the soups in, as well as the massive assembly line of volunteers cleaning the plates, bowls, and utensils. We were told that it’s considered a sacred duty to volunteer at this kitchen, and that many of the volunteers spending their time helping out were children of very wealthy people in the city. The Sikhs are very proud of their ability to take care of their neighbors.
What’s more, we saw many paintings of their religious leaders refusing to meet with Mogul emperors until the emperors sat on the ground and ate with the common people during lunch. They don’t think anyone is above anybody else in the eyes of God. That was pretty cool to see. What was not as cool to see were the other paintings in the museum at the Golden Temple. The Sikhs were persecuted pretty severely by some of the Mogul emperors because they absolutely refused to convert to Islam. They trace their religious lineage back to their first teacher who showed up around 700 or 800 years ago, and somewhere along the way, they incorporated a very strong warrior ethos into the religion. So when the Moguls came along, they gave them quite a fight. The paintings we saw were of Sikh martyrs being flayed, boiled alive, stoned to death, and fun stuff like that. But those weren’t even the disturbing ones. Apparently the Mogul invaders made a sport of cutting up infants into small pieces, making a garland out of them, and then hanging this around the necks of their mothers while they killed their fathers. So with this kind of historical imagery, it started to dawn on us that they probably didn’t like Pakistan too much, being a Muslim state and all. And sure enough, at the end of the museum tour, there was a display case of artillery shells, rifles, and commemorative knives that celebrated the contributions of the Sikhs during the Indo-Pakistan war. There’s some deep-seated rivalry there.
After the Golden Temple, we strolled over to Jallianwalla Bagh, which is the site of a massacre in 1919 that precipitated the eventual overthrow of British rule in India. There was a group of protesters gathered in a park area in between some apartment buildings, and there were only a few entrances and exits to this place, so when a squad of British soldiers went in to disperse the protesters, there was no way for the people to quickly escape. They opened fire on the protesters, and it was just a bloodbath. Dozens of people jumped into a nearby well to escape the shooters, and they were crushed to death by dozens more jumping in on top of them. You can still see many bulletholes in the building walls, so it’s a pretty somber sight. We were looking at a bullet-ridden wall, contemplating the tragedy of the place, when all of a sudden, SMACK! Rob got a nice big piece of syrupy offering cake thrown perfectly into his forehead. We weren’t quite sure what to make of it, since we had no idea where it came from, and nobody yelled anything at us, so we just kind of wandered over to the washroom and washed it off. So that was weird. Happy Birthday to Rob!
Later in the day, we found someone to give us a ride to the border-closing ceremony. It was very shady - basically the operator sold more tickets than he had seats for in his vehicles. It was quite an ordeal, but we ended up getting in a vehicle, in a very cramped seating arrangement, and arrived at the border just before the ceremony started.
When we arrived, there were, as always, SO many people!! People and buses and cars...with lots of shouting, gasoline fumes, dirt, trash...it was overwhelming. We walked about half a mile to reach the ceremony site, which was a stadium. It was packed to the gills, with people even hanging off the stairs to get a good look. We felt defeated. All that work to get here, and we weren't going to see a dang thing. Then, Amy spotted some other "whities" walking around back, so we decided to follow them. They joined a short line of people going through metal detectors, and showing ids and special-looking papers to officials - like a VIP line. Rob said, "We don't have VIP access." Amy at this point had accepted that nothing in India is as it seems and said, "Let's just try. What's the worst that could happen? We get kicked out?" Rob thought for a minute, shrugged and said, "Cool." We walked as inconspicuously as possible through the detectors and when we reached the officials, they just looked at us and waved us through. We then were escorted to a set of bleachers right up by the actual gates distinguishing the India and Pakistan border, and sat us down with about 50 other pale faces. We saw a small sign saying "Tourist seating." Tourist seating?? We're so glad they advertised it! Geesh. At least we decided to be risky and join the line! Now we had primo seats - with an up close, clear view. Amazing!
The ceremony itself was unlike anything we had ever seen. Somehow, the guards on the India side and the Pakistan side made a collaborative effort in creating costumes and a very entertaining border-closing ceremony. The border closes everyday at sunset and these guards do a whole production - they don't just close the gates. It was incredibly entertaining and pretty cool to say that we literally saw Pakistan. The pictures will do a better job of setting the scene and describing it.
The driver actually waited for us, and we got a ride back into town. We had dinner with some Israelis we met on the ride, then headed back to the Golden Temple to get a view of it at night.
It was a fun, albeit short trip. Just two days in town and we were off to our next destination - Jaipur.
The next morning, we woke up and packed up our little bags to go see the famous Golden Temple. This place is huge, magnificent, and is the holiest site for the Sikh religion. The Golden Temple is actually a smallish shrine two stories high, with its walls completely covered in glimmering gold paint. I have no idea how much of it is made of actual gold. But it looks pretty amazing. It’s surrounded by a marble pool, with a marble bridge leading to the entrance over the water. Most of the people in line to go into the Golden Temple were carrying some kind of a syrup-covered cake thing in as an offering, and as far as we could tell they just bought it at a window, and then carried it over the bridge to dump it into a garbage bin at the front door of the Golden Temple. It looked very gooey. The water is reputed to have healing powers, so we dipped our feet in it, just in case. Surrounding the pool is a wide marble walkway, which is in turn surrounded by a large white wall with various buildings and towers thrown in. They must have millions of visitors each year, because we saw thousands and thousands of people milling around, and this place is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. One cool thing we did was to visit their free community kitchen (you just drop in a donation as you can afford, but it’s not required). They have these large halls with rows of burlap fabric laid out for you sit down on, cross-legged. You bring in a plate, a bowl, a mug, and a spoon, and then you sit down and wait for these guys to stroll down each aisle and pour you some soup or curd or tea, and they give you a chapathi (kind of a mini-tortilla) and some vegetables and lentils. For being able to serve something like 100,000 people a day, it actually tasted pretty decent. On our way out, we saw some of the enormous pots they cook the soups in, as well as the massive assembly line of volunteers cleaning the plates, bowls, and utensils. We were told that it’s considered a sacred duty to volunteer at this kitchen, and that many of the volunteers spending their time helping out were children of very wealthy people in the city. The Sikhs are very proud of their ability to take care of their neighbors.
What’s more, we saw many paintings of their religious leaders refusing to meet with Mogul emperors until the emperors sat on the ground and ate with the common people during lunch. They don’t think anyone is above anybody else in the eyes of God. That was pretty cool to see. What was not as cool to see were the other paintings in the museum at the Golden Temple. The Sikhs were persecuted pretty severely by some of the Mogul emperors because they absolutely refused to convert to Islam. They trace their religious lineage back to their first teacher who showed up around 700 or 800 years ago, and somewhere along the way, they incorporated a very strong warrior ethos into the religion. So when the Moguls came along, they gave them quite a fight. The paintings we saw were of Sikh martyrs being flayed, boiled alive, stoned to death, and fun stuff like that. But those weren’t even the disturbing ones. Apparently the Mogul invaders made a sport of cutting up infants into small pieces, making a garland out of them, and then hanging this around the necks of their mothers while they killed their fathers. So with this kind of historical imagery, it started to dawn on us that they probably didn’t like Pakistan too much, being a Muslim state and all. And sure enough, at the end of the museum tour, there was a display case of artillery shells, rifles, and commemorative knives that celebrated the contributions of the Sikhs during the Indo-Pakistan war. There’s some deep-seated rivalry there.
After the Golden Temple, we strolled over to Jallianwalla Bagh, which is the site of a massacre in 1919 that precipitated the eventual overthrow of British rule in India. There was a group of protesters gathered in a park area in between some apartment buildings, and there were only a few entrances and exits to this place, so when a squad of British soldiers went in to disperse the protesters, there was no way for the people to quickly escape. They opened fire on the protesters, and it was just a bloodbath. Dozens of people jumped into a nearby well to escape the shooters, and they were crushed to death by dozens more jumping in on top of them. You can still see many bulletholes in the building walls, so it’s a pretty somber sight. We were looking at a bullet-ridden wall, contemplating the tragedy of the place, when all of a sudden, SMACK! Rob got a nice big piece of syrupy offering cake thrown perfectly into his forehead. We weren’t quite sure what to make of it, since we had no idea where it came from, and nobody yelled anything at us, so we just kind of wandered over to the washroom and washed it off. So that was weird. Happy Birthday to Rob!
Later in the day, we found someone to give us a ride to the border-closing ceremony. It was very shady - basically the operator sold more tickets than he had seats for in his vehicles. It was quite an ordeal, but we ended up getting in a vehicle, in a very cramped seating arrangement, and arrived at the border just before the ceremony started.
When we arrived, there were, as always, SO many people!! People and buses and cars...with lots of shouting, gasoline fumes, dirt, trash...it was overwhelming. We walked about half a mile to reach the ceremony site, which was a stadium. It was packed to the gills, with people even hanging off the stairs to get a good look. We felt defeated. All that work to get here, and we weren't going to see a dang thing. Then, Amy spotted some other "whities" walking around back, so we decided to follow them. They joined a short line of people going through metal detectors, and showing ids and special-looking papers to officials - like a VIP line. Rob said, "We don't have VIP access." Amy at this point had accepted that nothing in India is as it seems and said, "Let's just try. What's the worst that could happen? We get kicked out?" Rob thought for a minute, shrugged and said, "Cool." We walked as inconspicuously as possible through the detectors and when we reached the officials, they just looked at us and waved us through. We then were escorted to a set of bleachers right up by the actual gates distinguishing the India and Pakistan border, and sat us down with about 50 other pale faces. We saw a small sign saying "Tourist seating." Tourist seating?? We're so glad they advertised it! Geesh. At least we decided to be risky and join the line! Now we had primo seats - with an up close, clear view. Amazing!
The ceremony itself was unlike anything we had ever seen. Somehow, the guards on the India side and the Pakistan side made a collaborative effort in creating costumes and a very entertaining border-closing ceremony. The border closes everyday at sunset and these guards do a whole production - they don't just close the gates. It was incredibly entertaining and pretty cool to say that we literally saw Pakistan. The pictures will do a better job of setting the scene and describing it.
The driver actually waited for us, and we got a ride back into town. We had dinner with some Israelis we met on the ride, then headed back to the Golden Temple to get a view of it at night.
It was a fun, albeit short trip. Just two days in town and we were off to our next destination - Jaipur.
