FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2008 / DELHI TO AMRITSAR

 

 

 

 

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2008 / DELHI TO AMRITSAR

Or, “famisched, fermented and faschimmeled am I”

Did nothing in the am but go to the airport and take a flight to Amritsar which is in the Punjab. Punjab means the place of Five Rivers. Amritsar is a place that Cliff and Cathy learned about from an LA friend who told them that the Golden Temple was not to be missed. This has certainly turned out to be true. Amritsar looks very much like Varanasi or many of the other villages we’ve been to, although Amritsar is home to over 3 million people so it’s hardly a village. Amritsar is home to 60% Sikhs, 30% Hindus, 5% Muslims and 5% Christians. The large Sikh population makes for a very colorful scene on the streets; white, blue, pink or saffron turbans are everywhere and women wear brightly colored sarees.

The area is very agricultural but we saw no oxcarts or camel carts like we’d seen in Rajasthan or Gujarat; instead there many pony and horse carts. Major crops include rice, wheat and mustard seeds. But the general chaos and mayhem of the traffic and streets is exactly the same as anywhere else in India. Our Sikh driver – Mr. Singh - was particularly aggressive and probably never let up on his horn even for a minute.

We were distressed to find that the terror in Mumbai had not ended when we got up this morning and were (at least I was) somewhat nervous about heading to the Pakistan border. After checking into the hotel we honked our horn all the way to the town of Attari, about 28km north of town. We went to see the lowering of the Indian and Pakistani flags at sunset. We weren’t really prepared for the similarity the event would have to a football game between two rival teams, complete with people in the bleachers cheering and girls and boys dancing (ok here they dance to Bangra music and not Brittney Spears). There were border police who strutted and paraded like something out of a Monty Python Department of Silly Walks skit. They were high-stepping “peacocks” with either a red or blue fan on top of their heads (depending upon your “team”; red for India with khaki uniform and blue for Pakistan with blue uniform).  Here is a wonderful YouTube video documenting this daily ceremony http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC9NeJh1NhI.

Then we honked our way back into town and drove from “new” Amritsar to “old” Amritsar. I couldn’t tell the difference between the two. Suddenly the van stopped and we were told to get out, deposit our shoes, cover our heads – we had arrived at the Golden Temple. From the outside you really couldn’t see much, but suddenly we walked though a gate and a glistening gold structure appeared before us, reflected in a large pool of water (symbolic of nectar), and it was all like something out of a dream; magical and gleaming.

I haven’t seen anything so golden and special since the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Burma. But with this temple, unlike the Shwedagon, visitors can enter inside. There are three different levels where priests are reading from sacred texts and people are sitting silently on the floor in prayer. It was amazing. All the while priests are chanting lovely prayers that are amplified so everyone in the area can hear. It was so lovely that we asked our guide to find CDs of the chants for us to purchase the next day. I can’t describe how beautiful and special this place was. The temple is square in shape and we all thought it reminded us of pictures we’d seen of the Kaaba in Mecca. But the gold color of the building and the fact that it sits far away in the middle of huge square are of water that reflects the gleaming building, and the fact that pilgrims are walking around and around the temple, and the sound of the chants, all made it incredibly gorgeous.

No one seemed to mind that we toured the temple as they prayed and chanted. We could take photos outside but not inside the temple itself. I think Ferris said it best that the temple made all the textiles arts of India we’d seen on our trip come together for her. We climbed stairs to the roof and watched people touching large golden bells. We saw priests reading from sacred texts and saw large white yak-tail fly swatters (picture a large Japanese calligraphy brush).

After this mind-blowing experience, it was time for some Punjabi food and we went to NARULA’S (5 Taylor Road, The Mall, Amritsar) for a delicious dinner.