One evening we took a rickshaw to another hotel for dinner because they had live music every night. We were the only ones there so the musicians slacked off until we asked if they were going to play anything. Then they began playing lovely songs to go along with our delicious food. We took a rickshaw back and, as usual at nighttime, the town was dead quiet with very few people out. I walked behind Jeff as we climbed the stairs to our hotel, and there was someone walking behind me as well. As I reached the top of the stairs, I felt this person touch my rear, so I turned around and said “Excuse me??” He just looked at me blankly, so I told Jeff what he did, and Jeff backed him up against the wall. The guy at the hotel desk overheard what I said and rushed over, asked the man something in Punjabi, and without waiting for an answer, gave him a sharp slap across the face! Like, a head-turning slap! I went from fumingly angry to delighted. The two continued to jabber, and the hotel desk guy slapped him again! He pushed him outside, yelling at him, and then apologized to us and said we could go ahead on upstairs to our room. Once out of earshot, Jeff and I giggled about how ridiculous the scene was. We dashed to our room’s window, and we saw that the hotel desk guy had followed the other man outside and was still yelling at him, and that they had drawn a crowd. He gave one final hard slap before finally coming back inside. After so many of these “accidental” inappropriate touchings throughout India, it was very satisfying to see someone pay for it. The next morning, the desk guy apologized again, and said that it seemed the man was drunk. Standard.
Random parade in the street by our hotel
We heard that the Golden Temple is best at sunset, so we waited until then to visit it for the first time. We left our shoes with the shoe-keeper people, and walked across the shallow pool of water at the entrance (to cleanse your feet). The Golden Temple itself sits in the middle of a holy pool in the inner “courtyard” of a huge, square, marble building. It is only from the marble structure that one may take photos. We walked all around the temple to get the bridge to take us across to it. There were several people ritually bathing in the holy water. We waited in line for a few minutes before we could enter, and a boy behind us struck up a conversation with Jeff. His English was rather poor, but everyone around was suddenly part of the conversation or was watching. It was a little awkward because no one else on the bridge was talking! They wanted to know everything about us: how old we were, where we were from, if we were married (we said yes), if we had kids, what our names were, what religion we believed in, which hotel we stayed at. They were all very nice people, it’s just so funny to be such the center of attention of so many strangers!
Golden Temple
Golden Temple
We entered the temple and it was gorgeous. The temple is marble, but most of it is gold-plated, and the dome on top is supposedly 450 kg of gold (or something like that, look it up). The marble portions have intricate inlays. The temple is two stories with a rooftop prayer area as well. The bottom floor has musicians playing and chanting (which is played over loudspeakers all throughout the complex), and has the original copy of their sacred book (like our bible). All of the pilgrims threw donations into this center area. We climbed the stairs to the next level where we were able to look out over the first floor. The second floor was filled with people praying and reading from the many copies of their “bible” which they keep available on a shelf for everyone. There was a “chapel” on the second floor where one can pray and make offerings. The whole temple is very breath-taking, and it was incredible to see so many people worshipping at their holiest place.
We also visited a very bizarre Hindu temple that resembled a fun house; it was filled with small tunnels, water crossings, mirrors, and stairs. There is one path to take through it, and the walls are covered in statues and paintings of deities, and of pictures of the saint to which the temple is dedicated. The focal point of the temple is one central room with an altar where everyone prays and gives offerings. The old woman managing the altar gave Jeff and I a typical Indian candy (kind of like Baklava, but not really), which, I think, Hindu people normally bless then eat. But she motioned for us the just eat it, so we did, haha. We also checked out a large park, but it seemed really dirty and kind of sketchy, so we didn’t hang out there for too long. Amritsar also has a memorial park for the Indians who were killed in 1919 in peaceful protest against the British.
Other than the Golden Temple, the big attraction in Amritsar is the ceremony of the closing of the border with Pakistan. It sounded reasonably cool so we decided to make the one hour trek to the border in a very small share taxi with six other people. We were expecting there to be about maybe sixty people at the ceremony, but there were more like thousands! There were huge long lines at multiple security checkpoints (separate ladies cues, of course), and after clearing them, people were literally running towards the grandstands. There were two nice guys on our share taxi who helped us out, but as we approached the stairs to get to the grandstands (there was a separate section for ladies, but it’s not like I wanted to sit by myself away from Jeff), a guard told us to go to the VIP line. Um, why? Because we’re white? Very odd. We felt bad leaving the guys who helped us, but they understood that we’d have much better seats. We went through our VIP line which had its own section. All the Indian sections of the grandstands were packed, and Jeff and I had plenty of room, and we got to sit closest to all the action. We had to wait a while, but they eventually began the ceremony with lots of long, droning yells from both sides. They continued with absurd marching steps and high kicks where their knees almost smacked their faces. Lots of stomping, slamming of gates. They took down the flags and ended the ceremony with everyone cheering. It was such a good-natured rivalry it’s difficult to believe how much these two countries hate each other. We took our share taxi back to town, had dinner, and went to bed so we’d be ready to fly back to Delhi and then to Varanasi the next day.
Border to Pakistan
Border ceremony
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