Amritsar: Down with the Sikhness

There’s this phenomenon called "Delhi Belly." Basically the Indian equivalent of Montezuma’s Revenge. I’d throw out Maharaja’s Revenge if you pick up the bug outside of Delhi, but as it turns out, Delhi Belly is actually distinct to Delhi. As in, Pete got sick in Amritsar, brought on by our first night in Delhi. I didn’t get sick until the day after we got back to Delhi. Tulsi recently visited Delhi and even she got sick. So travel tip number 1 would be, when in Delhi: Don’t. Touch. Anything.

But we didn’t hit either Sickness or Sikhness until the evening of our arrival in Amritsar. First we stopped off at the border with Pakistan (about a half hour from Amritsar) for their daily border-closing ceremony. The border’s open during the day and closed at night. The closing draws huge crowds of Indians on one side, and not so much from the Pakistanis on the other side (quite surprising considering that the nearby Pakistani city, Lahore, is much larger than Amritsar). As the soldiers did their marching around, a dude in a white track suit led the crowd in cheers, and none were lacking in enthusiasm. At several stops on this trip, Pete and I were stopped to have someone take their photo with us. I suspect this is mostly because of Pete’s long blondish hair (he said in Korea a guy did the same thing and said "you look like movie star!"), but here it was because we were the white dudes at this super anti-Pakistani event. Of course each group of people had to take TWO photos with us, too, so they could swap the photographer. We happily obliged at first, but this became pretty tiresome after the 6th photoshoot.



There were some other white guys:


Nationalist hoopla finished, we got back to the train station to find that our driver didn’t want to drive us into town, and the only ricks available were cycle shaws. No motor. With old dudes at the helm. Younger shawsters have a sense of shame, I suppose. This meant we were passed by regular shaws (one of whom matched our speed for a while and laughed at us) and that we had to get out and walk when we had to go over the overpass. At least it was cheap, and I guess I felt like we did a good turn. The cycle shawers really looked like they could use the business. Haggard comes to mind.

The main draw here is the Sikh Golden Temple, which I guess I could compare to the Golden Mosque, if not for the incredible animosity between the two religions. Also the fact that the Golden Temple is totally open to all, nearly 24 hours. We stopped by at 10:00pm for a ceremony where they move a holy book into storage for the night. We came back in the morning and got to see the place in a completely different light. Anyway, it’s a big square with a moat in the middle, and a bridge leading to an island. On that island is the temple itself, totally decked out in gold. A great site, and very welcoming. They also had the world’s most gruesome museum, with paintings of all of the horrible things Muslims had done to Sikhs over the years. This included: sawing people in two down the center, encaging children alive in bricks, and pouring burning hot sand over people. They also had like 100 death photos of martyrs dead bodies. Think when we put Uday and Qusay on display so clerics could verify their deaths. That sorta stuff. Sadly, no photos of the museum.





In Amritsar there are a bunch of places advertising "dry fruit." Sadly this is just the Indian term for nuts. And there weren’t even any good ones. I really had my heart set on some CostCo-style giant bags of mixed dried fruits, but it wasn’t meant to be. Instead we countered Pete’s Delhi Belly with Pizza Hut. Partly because we ordered interesting drinks and I downed some cheesecake for dessert, this actually became the single most expensive meal of our trip. Pizza Hut, in addition to being just as delicious in India as it is in the States, is a fairly classy joint. Clean, nice bathrooms, attentive staff, diverse menu.





Finally, the Temple provides accommodation for all travelers, Sikh or not. These are provided at a nominal fee, provided they aren’t full of course. And of course we showed up on some bizarre holiday called Lohri, which we deduced was a North Indian bonfire holiday judging from the smoke in the air. The next day, everything had cleared up, showing that it wasn’t pollution in the air. But yeah, we couldn’t sleep with the pilgrims and had to settle for a dive hotel. :(

Next: I covered both ends of Delhi on the last trip, so a brief post on our Agra excursion. After that, I’ve got a post in the works just about the trains, and I’ll do a compendium of travel tips after that. Then, I swear, no more travel blogging.