Amritsar
Date arrived: 3rd March 2024
Date Departed: 7th March 2024
Favourite sight: Attari - Wagah Border Parade
Average Cost: £27.10 PPPD
Amritsar is famous for the Golden Temple, a fabulous Sikh shrine that completely lives up to the hype. As with so many places visited on this trip though, we found a lot more to explore in our time here, and learned a lot about some of the darker moments of British history in the process.
3rd March 2024
We arrived late in Amritsar, and managed to arrange a tuk-tuk from the station to our accommodation, the functionally named City View Hotel with Garden. We were greeted by Avijit, the delightfully enthusiastic and knowledgeable hotel manager, and a lovely room, which we were told would be changed the following day to an *even better one*. We were also told, unexpectedly, that we would get complimentary breakfast the next two days. Well weren't we the lucky hotel guests!
As it happens we were. For the next few days, Avijit and his team looked after our every need, offering us complimentary tea every time we arrived, as well as the aforementioned breakfasts. The room was nice, which was just as well as all we really wanted to do was collapse into our (large and comfortable) bed, and we didn't bother unpacking much since we knew we would be moving rooms the next day.
4th March
We had to set an alarm today, as we had been notified that our complimentary breakfast would be served at 09:30 sharp! We enjoyed a good shower, and a delicious breakfast of local kurta, along with the company of a pair of English ladies who were staying at the same hotel. Avijit suggested that if we wanted to visit the border closing ceremony at nearby Wagah, perhaps we might all like to share a taxi, which would keep the price down for us. As all four of us were keen to explore this, we asked him to make the arrangements - which he did, for that very afternoon.
With the morning free, and as we were in Amritsar, there seemed like no better place to go than to the Golden Temple itself!
When you see pictures of it, the Golden Temple seems to float in the middle of a tank, otherwise open to the world. You could easily spend quite some time looking around for it. In reality both tank, temple, and a number of other buildings are all enclosed within an enormous campus in the heart of the City. It's not difficult to find, but it's only by crossing the open courtyard and then making your way through one of the surrounding buildings that you get into the temple complex itself. This involves covering your hair (scarves are provided for you) and removing your shoes (there are shoe cloakrooms as well) then bathing your feet in the shallow baths of gently flowing water that cross all entrances to the complex.
Clockwise from top left: Ceremonial guards wander the temple campus wearing disctinctive purple robes and yellow turbans, and wielding spears; The temple is truly magnificent to see; You can get a feel for the scale of the temple campus.
We spent a fascinating 90 minutes exploring the temple complex, but refrained from joining the queue to access the temple itself. This ran the full 100m length of the causeway at least, and from what we could see was a significant religious pilgrimage for the Sikhs there. Whilst we were confident we would have been welcomed, we didn't feel right to do that.
We left the magnificent Golden Temple behind us and explored some of the more commercial areas of downtown Amritsar, eventually finding a very impressive looking coffee shop next to the Partition Museum, housed in the old converted town hall. We had a light lunch and an excellent Latte, before wandering back to the hotel.
Attari-Wagah Border
This, I think takes some explanation... and that won't be enough. At the India - Pakistan border between Attari (Pakistan side) and Wagah, the respective border forces stage a nightly ceremony to 'close' the border point. Many years ago, Julie saw a Michael Palin travel programme on the BBC, where he visited this crossing , and explained what was going on. On this basis, and as this still goes on each and every day, we were keen to visit and see for ourselves!
Words fail me. It's barking. There you go, that's as coherent as I can get. The whole thing takes place in a kind of specially constructed stadium that faces the road running to the gates, and there are lots of soldiers in dress uniforms with crazy hats. First they gee up the crowds on both sides, getting all of the ladies down to the road for lots of flag waving, dancing, relay races and shouts of 'Hindustan!' (and presumably Pakistan on the other side of the gate.) Then the crowds move away, and the proper bonkersness begins.
Various groups of soldiers line up (and this seems to be mirrored on both sides of the border) and then take it in turns to march up to the border very aggressively, high-stepping, kicking, and generally stomping, all in time to a manic drum beat, and perfectly in sync with their counterparts on the other side. There's lots of saluting, hat waving, foot stomping, drawing and sheathing of swords and general pomp, and it's it so camp it's insane. If you ever get the chance to see it for yourself, you must!
With no word of a lie, this ceremony is the craziest organized event I have ever seen!
All the ladies are invited to line up, just before going nuts with flags and dance music...
Border guards stading around, just prior to aggressively marching on Pakistan one at a time
Let the high kicks commence!
Ram Tirath Temple
From the ridiculous, to the sublime. On our way back from Wagah, we called in briefly at the Ram Tirath temple, an important Hindu site, and believed to be a key location of the epic Ramayana, as well as the Ashram of its author, the sage Srishtikarta, also known as Valmiki. The large temple complex is centred around two tanks, separated by a slim bridge which also houses a stunning pagoda-like temple. Contained within the templs is an 8' tall, 800KG gold plated statue of Valmiki. As well as a poet and sage, Valmiki is believed to have given shelter to Sita - the wife of Rama - after her husband exiled her from the holy sity of Ayodhya. That's enough Hindu stories for one day I think!
For us, the timing of this visit was perfect, as the sun was just dipping down behind the complex of buildings at one edge of the tank, leaving the most magnificent skies, and gorgeous reflections in the water. It was a very calm and tranquil place as well, and could not have been further from the chaos we had just witnessed.
Looking up the tank to the various buildings of the Ram Tirath temple complex
The central pagoda of the Ram Tirath temple
Beautiful lighting on the tank
5th March
Today was one of the most interesting days we had in India, althought we didn't travel that far. Our target was the superb Partition Museum in the centre of Amritsar, housed in the old converted town hall. This museum is superb, and covers a part of Indian (and British) history that, to our shame, we were completely unaware of.
It would be wrong to over-summarise, but I think that if you have an opportunity to read about he great partition then you should - and be amazed. It also helped to mae (a little) more sense out of the exhibition at Atari-Waggah that we saw the day before.
We did some more exploring a little further out of the centre of Amritsar as well, includig venturing a few kilometres south in search of some dinner.
6th March
Today we sought to explore some more of Amritsar's local sights,starting with the Golden Temple experience centre (see below) and then moving on to the Gobindgarh Fort, a couple of kilometres out of the old town centre.
The Golden Temple Experience Centre summed up a lot of my thoughts on India.
The theory is that this free multimedia exhibit contains four separate rooms, each themed slightly differently to highlight different aspects of the history of the golden temple, and the Sikh religion in the Punjab. As part of the exhibit, the show can be listened to in different languages, through wireless headsets which can be obtained at the reception.
Of course, there were no headsets. What happened to them I couldn't tell you, but given that this very impressive technological marvel can't be more than 5 years old, it was surprising. Consequently the shows are only available in Hindi.
We sat through the first show, which was fascinating, and provided enough visual clues to understand what was going on, all projected onto an upside down pyramid, surrounded on 4 sides by banks of seating. It is notable that only two sides of the pyriamid were still showing the film, and one of those could only be seen from the front two rows, suggesting that the exhibit could only manage about a third of its original target audience size.
And this was when India did it's thing. We had just shuffled into the second room (a series of tall tables doted around a large room, with pictures projected onto all of the walls) when one of the assistants came up to us, tentatively, and asked if we could come back into the other room. She wasn't really explaining what was going on, but seemed earnest, so we went with her. She sat us down, and a colleague explained that because the headphones weren't working, they would re-run the whole show - in English - just for us.
And they did - all four exhibits, private showings for us and (afte a bit) another couple of English speakers who wandered in. We had a couple of false starts while they got some of them working, but we couldn't believe the effort they went to to allow us to get th e most of tof this completely free exhibition.
And for me that summed up so much of this country - impressive investment in infrastructure and cool things, but no maintenance, so things stop working - but the people will do anything they can to make it a memorable experience and to look after you.
The Gobindgarh Fort was orignally an outpost of the British Raj, and as such home to the officer responsible for one of India's worst atrocities, the Amritsar Massacre of 1919. Again, this is an episode of British history that we are not, and most definitely should be, taught. I think most British people are aware that our forefathers did some pretty nasty things in the name of Empire, but when you read about some of the things that went on in India, it's incredible that our relations are quite so cordial even now.
So yes, Gobindgarh was strange. The construction is seriously impressive, in a 19th century fort kind-of-way, and it has been turned into a kind of family day, out with everything from an art gallery, magic shows, cafes and restaurants, and even a 5d cinema!
We had an entertaining tuk-tuk ride back with the driver trying to drop us off a good two kilometres from our destination on the premise that he couldn't get any closer. When I explained that only taking us half of the way meant he would only get half of his payment, he miraculously managed to find a way through! In general we have had excellent experiences with service providers, and in particular drivers, all across the sub-continent - but there's always the odd tryer, and we were getting quite astute at recognising them by this stage!
On our way to dinner tonight, we also visited the Jallianwala Bagh gardens, which were the site of the Amritsar Massacre mentioned above. These large gardens are accessed from a narrow alleyway down the side of the buildings, which opens out into a very beautiful landscaped space - now a memorial to the 1,000 or so Indians mercilessly gunned down by the British Indian Army in 1919. There is also a weekly sound and light show which tells the story - in Hindi - and we happened to arrive just as it was beginning. Despite not understanding what was being said, we sat and watched the show and listened through.
7th March
Today was an early start, with the inimitable Avijit arriving before 7AM to make sure we were furnished with our complimentary morning Chai, prior to the Taxi he had arranged collecting us for our trip to the railway station to catch our 08:30 train to Pathankot. We arrived in this small city that sits right on the Punjab / Himachal Pradesh border and discovered that there was quite a lot of work going on at the railway station. We didn't realise it at the time, but Pathankot is home to the larges military base in Asia.
After dealing with urgent priorities (finding a loo - harder than it should have been) we worked out that the bus station was temporarly closed due to the construction work going on . We did manage to find a pre-paid taxi stand however, and managed to secure a taxi for the 92KM ride up Dharamshala, in the foothills of the Himalaya!
