Amritsar and the Golden Temple

We arrived before noon, but after the journey that began before dawn from the cool, green mountains of Dharamsala and ended in the sweltering, polluted city, it felt like the day should be ending. We had taken a government bus, which run locally and keep to a tight schedule, so men can hop out and have a pee against the side of the bus in the middle of town, but ladies have to hold it as there is not enough time to find a bathroom and get back to the bus before it heads off again.  After climbing onto the top of the bus to haul down our packs, I ran for the bathroom (which, like many public bathrooms in India, had at least an inch or two of mysterious, murky liquid over the floor) and then we agreed to go with a tuck-tuck driver to a guesthouse. As the tuck-tuck jerked through the congested streets, I gasped for a breath of fresh air, finding only bus fumes and the aromas of burning trash, urine and fried dough to pull into my lungs. The air blowing into my face wasn't cool or refreshing, but somehow magnified the heat we already felt, rushing over me like the stale breath of a dirty old man - hot and moist, sour and smoky. Amritsar was hot – suffocating – and filthy; the first place we had come that I immediately wanted to leave.
We were brought to a guest house which boasted all- a/c rooms and hot showers, but instead we got dirty diapers stuffed behind the door and under the bed and an army of ants marching along the walls and the floor. The air conditioner, which was a big part of the draw that got us here, was actually just a fan bringing the hot, stale air from outside into the bedroom.  The bathroom, which looked remarkably clean with the lights off, was covered in the grayish film of other people's sweat and dirt.  The hot water was a lie, too, which was fine, as the cold shower was the only respite from the heat, anyway.  It was supposed to be an old English mansion, but sitting outside, in the sad, little courtyard, it felt far from its former glory. The pale, pale blue of the sky directly overhead faded down into the smoggy horizon until it was indistinguishable from the dead gray concrete walls of the guest house.

We stayed there for one night.  On the way to a pretty awesome cave temple, which turned out to be in a building, not a cave, we saw a rickshaw man sleeping so soundly in the shade, legs all akimbo...  It was a our first cave temple, and although India does have some amazing temples that are actually inside real caves, there are also many temples like this, where the inside of the building is made into strange winding hallways and rooms, with mirrored tiles, deities, paintings, statues, lingams (literally penises, in the form of figurative statues representing Shiva's creation of everything), bells, paintings, low ceilings (two or three feet high, so you have to crawl under them on hands and knees) and ankle-deep water.

We also went to the border with Pakistan for the ceremony that the two governments (India and Pakistan) perform every night, meant to somehow improve relations between the countries.  First you take a taxi out there, as it's almost an hour away.  (We went with a lady from our guesthouse, a strange woman, Hazel, from the UK who is now a storyteller in Canada.) Our taxi driver was Sikh, and he wore a pretty blue turban.  Hilda pointed to a beautiful palace-looking building and asked what it was.  Taxi Man said, "College, sikstudent."  Hilda looked surprised.  "Only six students in that whole place?" she asked.  Charlie and I giggles in the back seat.  "No, no, SIKH student!" he said, somewhat amused.  Keep in mind that the main draw to Amritsar is the Golden Temple, a Sikh temple that draws between 60,000 - 80,000 visitors everyday.  Because of this temple, Amritsar is a holy city for the Sikhs, and there are other holy sites around the city as well.  On the way home, Hazel pointed to the same building and asked, "So, only Sikhs are allowed there?"  Taxi Man replied, "Sik, sik..."  (Westerners pronounce it "seek" but Sikhs in Amritsar pronounced it "sick.")  Hazel was baffled.  "Oh, it's a hospital?  Only sick people?"  Taxi Man motioned to his turban, repeating "Sik, sik!"  Hilda thought he was making the motion for crazy.  "Only mentally ill people?" she asked as I tried to keep it together in the backseat.  By now the Taxi Man was frustrated, and probably a little baffled by Hazel's absolute ridiculousness.  "No, school, for turban man, only turban man!" he told her.  Charlie and I giggled as we explained it to her again, just to make sure she got it.

The Wagah Border ceremony was a very interesting mess, and I wouldn't recommend making the trip to anyone.  (You can check it out here, on YouTube if you have four minutes to kill, that's probably the best way to see the most interesting part of it.)  The taxi parks a few kilometers away, and then you walk to the entrance.  Nobody tells you that you have to get in line until you are far past the end of it, and then you walk all the way back, men on one side, women on the other.  Indians are not awesome at lines.  They either disregard the whole idea of "waiting their turn" and push/shove/cut until they get what they want, or they form a line so tight and aggressive that the person behind you is holding on tight to your waist or shoulders with both arms and using her whole body to push you forward, right up (and hopefully, it seems, through) the person in front of you.  Then when other women would try to use the typical method of infiltrating the line halfway up, there would be no weakness, no room for cutting.  But the cutter will try hard, standing there, trying to elbow her way in until a police officer sends her to the back of the line (or until she got in).  It was still hot, and all the bodies pressing together were creating a body-odored steaminess that made me want to turn around and leave.  But I held my ground!  The mounted policemen would periodically charge at the lines, scaring the women and running the men into a barbed-wire fence.  

We went through security, where our water was confiscated, and then continued on to the stadium built around the Indian side of the border.  There was something blocking the way, so the hoards of people just heaved forward like a giant wave until they were pushed back again, receding violently and nearly trampling me and many small children.  I decided to get out.  We found the VIP section, also for foreigners (because white skin and VIP seem to be synonymous in India, there's a big business around skin-whitening) where we were allowed in, despite our lack of passports, identification or passes.  We went through more security.  We were escorted to seats in the front, oe in the concrete bleachers which were so hot that they burned our butts.  I was right next to an adorable baby, who was a welcome distraction from the shenanigans of the ceremony.

The spectacle began with women dancing, Bollywood-style, for the crowds.  There was patriotic chanting and music, flag-waving, shouting.  Over on the Pakistan side they were filing in calmly, scarved or burka-ed women on one side, bearded men on the other side.  

Then the soldiers (or were they performers?) came out in their uniforms, each side sporting ridiculous peacock-esque headdress, and had a yelling competition, which India lost every time.  One Pakistani soldier and one Indian soldier shouted what sounded like "GOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!" (but could have been something else) into a microphone at the same time, and whoever finished last won.  Then each soldier had their own angry march to the border, during which they gave high kicks so high the Rockettes would be jealous, and I feared they would break their own noses.  They lowered the flags in perfect sync, and there was a handshake between India and Pakistan so short that it practically didn't happen.  Then the gates were closed and the show was over and we had to fight our way back to the taxi, burned butts and all.  (On the way back Hazel bought us salted lemon sodas, which are soda water and lime juice - though they swear that the tiny, green, lime-tasting fruits are lemons - and ice and salt.  Amazing when you are totally dehydrated.)

The next day we made our way to the Golden Temple.  It is a huge complex, as many of the 80,000 pilgrims who come each day also eat all their meals there and sleep there.  Huge.  We were taken to the foreigner's quarters, maybe twenty-five beds in a little windowless bunker with a shower but no toilet.  But there was a water filter and a WASHING MACHINE!  A washing machine!  In INDIA!!  And we got to use it!  FOR FREE!  (Of course, if we wanted to pee we had to go out of our little den and through a massive courtyard to the communal bathrooms, which were very clean, by any standards, but always full.  Again, lines are a problem.  I don't know about the men, but the women would run in and pick a stall and hold on to it, and they went in when that stall was free.  Other women tried to weasel in where they could, and there were times that I just couldn't, in that beautiful, holy place, kick a grandma out of the way so that I could pee a little sooner, even when she kicked me first.  But I did push the younger ones who tried to take me out. The stalls also had face-sized holes about face-level in the doors, and the women seemed fascinated by what I was doing in my stall every time I went in.  They just stood on their toes and peered down at me as I hovered over the hole in the floor.  So weird.)

So, aside from the communal bathrooms and the "foreigners” section, there was just about everything you would need from a town, all inside the complex - internet, hotel, snacks, transportation and the dining hall.  The dining hall is an amazing operation, and one of the only choices for eating.  We went looking for other food nearby and walked for about forty minutes, finding only one small dhaba (like a small, dirty cafe that only serves one dish) and a mediocre restaurant where we learned that "veg sandwich" mean white bread with thin slices of tomato and mayonnaise.  

The dining hall is a force.  You can hear it from a block away, like a giant machine with lots of clanking metal parts.  Here's how it works:  You walk up, and a metal spoon, plate and bowl are shoved into your hands.  You proceed past the piles of volunteers cutting garlic and ginger to the balcony, where you wait until the current seating is done.  When the big hall is empty (there are two, one upstairs and one downstairs), you fight (if you have the stomach for it) your way in and find a seat on a burlap runner on the floor, which is probably wet with water or curd or dal or some combination of the three.  I saw at least two grandmas get elbowed hard in the neck by hungry men.  Then the servers come around with buckets of dal, veg, curd, water and chappati (bread), and dump some of each onto your plate.  When you are finished, you get up and bring your plate, bowl and spoon out to the volunteers who bang the plates into the waste pile and throw them into a massive metal bucket to be taken to the sinks, where more volunteers are furiously washing and then throwing them into the massive clean bucket, to be handed to incoming diners.  The buckets were several times larger than your average backyard kiddie pool. Back in the hall, as soon as all the food has been dished out, the cleaning crew comes around - one person dumps water on the ground while another follows with a squeegee, pushing all the spilled food into a grate near the door.  Before the floor is fully cleaned, the next group is pushing its way in.

The Temple itself is a big, beautiful gold building in the middle of a huge square water tank. There's also some white marble and dark wood, but mostly gold. It's something. We went to check it out at night for the first time, and even though it was getting late, well past dark, the area surrounding the tank was full of people walking, bathing and setting up their beds for the night. (People who didn't rent rooms slept anywhere they could find a space to lay down a blanket, or just to lay down their bodies – any floor was up for grabs, whether it was beside the temple, the bathrooms, the dining hall or somewhere else. There was at least one big office that lent out comforters to visitors, though by the look of the bedding, I guess that the office does not have its own washing machine.) Everyone – men, women and children – had to cover their heads within the temple grounds. Men wear turbans, women wear scarves (and pull those scarves completely over the babies they carried) and children wore bandannas. When the wind blew my scarf off the next afternoon, a whole group of people ran over to inform me of it, even as I rushed to pull it back on.

As you enter, downstairs, there is a sacred-er area in the center, partitioned-off, where important people do important things. When we were there at night, they were carefully wrapping up a sword and putting it away, with lots of ceremony. From there you can go upstairs to see the giant book. It is the Sikh holy book, and someone has to be reading it at all times. It is HUGE. Not just a long book, but bigger than my mom. (Okay, she's not that big, for a person, but for a book, she's enormous!) So you can watch the guy read it. If you're Sikh, it seems like a really good place to pray.

There was another ceremony later, in which something holy (I think it was the sword) was taken out in a big gold palanquin, and everybody tried to touch it and prayed, and then everything was cleaned with orange dusters and went back inside. The Sikhs seem to be a very clean people.

They are also uber-friendly. There's something in their teachings about welcoming new people into the “true path” and they teach their children to be very outgoing and friendly. The whole time we were in India, locals wanted to talk to us and know about us, but at the Temple it was different. They seemed to be asking for us as much as for themselves, with a different kind of gentle friendliness that was quite warm and welcoming. We were approached by many people, and especially many teenagers, wanting to know the usual stuff: where we are from, how we like our travels, if we are married, what our favorite hobbies are, etc. They also wanted to know how we felt when we were inside the Temple grounds. Our answers to that question never seemed to satisfy them completely.

In Amritsar there is also a Silver temple, which is almost exactly the same as the Golden Temple, except its doors are silver.  Same gold, same chandeliers inside, same tank, same fish.  Oh, and its a Hindu temple.  That was a big difference.  We were there for evening puja and it was so lively and fun, not like the Golden Temple which was solemn and serious.  There were musicians and a big, fat priest who threw water on us.  There were candles and shouting and a lady shoving me up front so I could get a better view.  And outside there was a sadhu who, when I asked if I could take his picture, carefully arranged his scarf before looking up at me.