Sikhtastic Amritsar

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  Amritsar, Punjab, India
Friday, May 29, 2009

Our trip to Amritsar was secured by a travel agent in Rishikesh who we went to after we found out that the tickets for the date we wanted were sold out. In cases like this, there's usually someone who can find a way around it at a price, and the price of the "emergency tickets" we had to buy was incredibly inflated. We were heading out on schedule though, so that's what mattered. There is no train station in Rishikesh however, so we had to head out an hour early to Dehra Dun-- a massive industrial city about an hour away. On the bus ride there we were befriended by a really nice Indian who spoke almost perfect English and since we were running so late (as usual) he helped us out a bunch and told us there was actually a stop before the bus station that was closer to the train station. I'm not sure we would have made it there in time if he hadn't told us, and we were really thankful for this cultural kindness that always seems to show itself when we need it.

The train experience itself was much less chaotic than the train from Old Delhi. We found our car immediatly and prepared ourselves for (what we thought was going to be) a 12 hour ride through the night. As we kept moving the cities we passed through slowly became dustier and less foresty and by morning time the train stations we stopped in were full of turban wearing Sikhs. Furthermore, we had just recently found out that a Sikh Guru had been assassinated in Vienna, and there were riots all across the Punjab-- which was the reason behind all the soldiers toting arms ranging from colonial looking pistols to semi automatic rifles. We had seen Indian soldiers at the airport and Delhi and here and there in the bigger cities, but the Punjabi soldiers seem to go an extra mile than the others for fashion. Maybe it's just the turbans and the serious facial hair, but they're also decked out with colorful bands and they just seem to stand out. This is part of the reason we really wanted to go to Attari-- a town west of Amritsar on the border with Pakistan where soldiers from each country try to out-do each other with symbolic gestures of bravado. But this wouldn't be for another day or two, and the train seriously took so long to get to Amritsar. We boarded at around 7pm and by 10am we still hadn't arrived. I think it was around 11 when we finally got there, and we were surprised to find Amritsar a bit more similar to Delhi than what were expecting. It was so hot and so dirty and so dusty except unlike Delhi everyone is Sikh. We were immediatly approached by one with an enormous white beard who lead us out of the train station mumbling some half-English language. He was trying to push a guest house on us, but we had our preference set on the Lucky Guest House which was supposed to have a really good rooftop view of the Golden Temple. We went with him anyway because we his guest house was close to ours and we just wanted to get to there, and we were expecting him to have some mode of transportation other than a bicycle rickshaw. The theme of Amritsar would seriously be a defiance of our expectations however, and he led us to his mangled bicycle. He somehow packed our backpacks into it and fit us on top, and after pulling up a sun cover uncomfortably right on top of our heads, he jumped on and took off. I can't imagine a vehicle more awkward, more degrading, and more regretful than the bicycle rickshaw (except maybe the rickshaw that's pulled by some guy). We made the mistake of hiring one of these in Old Delhi after checking out the Jama Masjid, and we thought we'd never get on another one, but here we had been sucked into it. He started going up a hill to a bridge and we just said stop and got out. We had to convince him to just take the 50r and go instead of taking us the rest of the way. We got an auto rickshaw and, after some seriously poor navigation through some narrow alleyways, we made it to the hotel.

The whole purpose of our visit to Amritsar was to see the Golden Temple, probably the most sacred place in the world to the Sikh religion. Most people in the US have never even heard of it and I only know a few people who know any serious details about the belief This makes being an American in Amritsar very, very peculiar because how can we every actually comprehend what this place means to the average pilgrims who come here (tens of thousands daily)? We definatly don't have anywhere in the States or in the cultural mind of America that can compare to the amount of devotion that is directed to the Golden Temple. What makes it even more strange is that Amritsar itself is kind of a downer. But two blocks away from the Lucky Guest House was the Temple, and we walked in it completely oblivious to the degree of this religion that's been expanding and thriving in this region for several centuries, and it was kind of like walking into an alternate reality. The Temple is open 24 hours a day, and I think at all times you can walk in and find people circumambulating clockwise around it. It runs a pilgrims rest house where people can stay, but by night time there's still rows and rows of people sleeping outside on the marble walkway surrounding the Temple. Within the complex are several different areas of religious importance, but the whole thing is based around a murky reflecting pool (filled with fish), and in the center of the pool is the Temple. One of the major buildings in the langar, a massive dining area where anyone can come in and sit on the floor with the Sikh community and eat free food. It's one way that Sikhism seriously devotes itself to community service, and every gurdwara (Sikh temple) does it, even the one in Orlando (which you should visit). Probably our favorite thing about the temple was that 24 hours a day a chant is maintained from inside the temple, and it's blasted out throughout the whole complex through loudspeakers. This combined with the extreme cleanliness of the marble walkways, the pilgrims both solemn and emotional, and the incredibly beauty of the temple made the whole moment really serene but also subtley overwhelming. The fact that we knew so little about this place really set in, and we just hung out there all afternoon.

The response of the Sikhs to our being there was varied but mostly welcoming or at least tolerant. There's a special force of spear wielding Temple guards that, like most ceremonial guards, kept very stern but we did get a wink out of one of them. We were starting to discover that younger Sikh boys have a special affection for Westerners, and we were followed around by a group of them asking us all the questions they knew how to ask in English. In the langar dining hall, we were warned by some 20-something Sikh guys not to waste any of the food "because it is priceless" which was a very deep thing to say, but a little intimidating (especially because they give out such large portions!). Our favorite people to meet were the Sikhs who immediatly started explaining things to us about the complex, and who would ask us to take pictures with their families afterwards. From everyone there was an immense pride of religion that seems so uncommon sometimes back home.

When the sun set the Temple went into the process of it's nightly ritual. In Sikhism there is a line of 10 human gurus who all appointed one another before their deaths, but the 10th guru appointed the Guru Granth Sahib as his sucessor, which is a holy book-- like the Sikh Bible. Since it succeeded as the "living Guru", it is treated as such with attendants fanning it throughout the day, and at night it is put to bed in a tower directly in front of the Temple. This is done with a massive procession and some awesome musical chanting. We were allowed to walk around the Temple while all this was going on, and it was just so unreal. People were sitting in all corners, climbing to the second story and bending over the railing to get a good look of the book as it was unwrapped, but on a pedestal, and carried out.

After all of this serious religion, we decided to spend our next day somewhere a little lighter and sillier, and what better place to go for this than Pakistan? To get there we'd have to go an hour away to the border town of Attari, and we were taken there via auto rickshaw by two young Sikh guys. One of them, Prash, introduced a side of Sikh culture that we had yet to seriously experience: the young male Sikh who literally cannot stop staring at a white woman. We had dealt with the staring issue of India previously-- in nearly all cases you can tell that it really is a cultural thing. It's not gawking or aggressive or mean-- you can see it in their faces. It's just not considered rude to stare here and it's just something you have to get over because it happens wherever you go. But to date we've had a couple encounters with Sikh guys who stare and do something creepy simultaneously, and for an hour Sarah endured Prash's compliments and creepy smiles. He never actually crossed the line of harassment, and was in fact very very friendly and helpful to both of us, but there was definatly something weird about him. There are probably a couple examples of this, but our favorite is that he gave us his phone number so that we could call him when Sarah has a baby so that he can help pick out a name. What the hell?

Like all of our experiences in Amritsar, the border closing ceremony between Pakistan and India demolished all our expectations. We got there an hour early, and this was not a good thing because the cement bleachers that would be our seats for the next three hours had no shade, and we were practically in Pakistan in summertime. It was really, really, really hot. The soldiers were marching around keeping order, and slowly over time more and more people filled the stands. From over the incredibly decorative gate between the two countries we could see the Pakistan side, and they did not seem to be attracting the same kind of crowd India was. Then all of a sudden some of the soldiers told the women and children of the growing mob to get in a line, and two by two they were passed giant Indian flags, and sent to run towards the border gate waving it around and screaming for their country. This seemed a little provocative and it was definatly symbolic-- but what happened next was just off the wall ridiculous. Since we had arrived the India side had been blaring Indian classical music, but when the soldiers decided that enough women and children had run to the border waving flags, they shut off the classical music and started blaring electronic-pop Bollywood dance music. All the women and children in the line disassembled and formed an unruly dance party-- we guess to show Pakistan just how fun India really is. It was so confusing-- it was hot and we were practically in a desert and this dance off went on for at least 45 minutes. Then the real ceremony began: on either side of the gate the soldiers march in different formations and kick their feet really really high-- our guidebook accuratley compares it to Monty Python's silly walks skit. One notable thing about this is that while the soldiers are marching, each country takes turns making everyone shout things out of nationalistic pride. On the India side there had to be at least 500 people, and they were all yelling at the top of their lungs "Hindustan Zindabad!" (long live India), and they sounded so psyched up and crazy. But on the Pakistan side it sounded like the guy who was leading the chant was having a hard time getting the same energy out of the substantially smaller crowd of Pakistani's, and there was of course no dance off happening on that side of the gate.

There's really not much else that can be said about Attari-- it's a small town that has been somewhat cursed by the burden of having this border closing ceremony. By this we do not mean to say that we didn't enjoy it-- it's pretty incredible that something like this goes on every single day and both flags are still lowered side by side and everyone goes home peacefully. But Attari is like, nothing but this ceremony, and the 1km walk to the border is infested with people trying to sell you these ridiculous CD's containing slideshows of the sights of Amritsar. It's some serious gang work going on because they are all young boys and they are all infinatley persistant and refuse to take no for an answer.

Aside from all this, the only other thing we did with our three days in Amritsar was a visit to the Mata Temple, a Hindu "cave" temple which venerated a 20th century female Indian who worked for social rights. Once again our expectations were shattered: it wasn't a real cave at all but something that is perhaps even cooler. I guess you could call it a manmade cave but I can't think of any other way to describe it. It was something like the Orlando Science Center only the exhibits were on different Hindu gods. It was so strange that we can't even really picture how it worked architechturally, but walking into the main hall and up a flight of stairs we entered. The whole thing was one long hallway that weaved in and out and back on itself, at times shrinking so small that you had to crawl, other times going through enclosed rooms with water up to your ankles and then emtying out into a large room with several shrines. Of course there were two attendants waiting to put dots on our heads at the very end, and after sitting in the main hall for a half hour listening to a Vedic chant, we left. Unfortunatley, there's a broad sweeping no photography policy for Hindu temples, so you'll just have to take our word for it: that place was crazy.

From Amritsar we would take our second six hour bus ride to Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj, the home of the Tibetan Government in Exile and one of our most anticipated destinations. We hope everyone is doing really well and we hope that we can pick up the pace with our updates. It's incredibly time consuming but very much worth it because we get to read comments from the people we love back home. For everyone going to Bonnaroo in a few days, you're gonna have a mindblowing experience and please please please try to channel our spirits to Tennessee so we can party with you, and stay safe. We're thinking about everyone and hopefully we'll be able to write some more soon.

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