Hotel Heritage Inn Amritsar

... Had a nice chat with an English/Indian guy who now lives in the States and was introduced to the whole family and if you know anything about Indian families you know that was a lot of people!! He was mightily impressed that I wanted to see the Golden Temple more than the Taj and had come there first!

This was a very special evening and it is something that I will remember for a very long time.

... the guy next to him selling same deal for 100 rupees less.. it was pretty chaotic.

We got on our rickshaw to our guesthouse which didnt actually drop us there, no he dropped us about a 10 minute walk away, he didnt tell us which way to go so we ended up with backpacks walking through the main bazaar God knows where we were heading in 40 degree heat.. but finally we found our hostel.

Now Ive been in a lot of hostels and I know they are a bit ...

... the water for a minute, and then had one of the bathers snap a photo of me with the shining temple in the background. It was at this moment that it occurred to me there were no other foreigners (obvious Westerners, at least) to be seen. Just me and hundreds upon hundreds of Indians. Several times while making the rounds of the big pool I was asked by quite a few people to join them in a photo. Sometimes, that sort of thing can get annoying ...

... 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 ...

April 14, 2009 Aman felt much better when he woke up. We spent the 14th in Delhi relaxing and playing with Amrit and Meher. Janpal got sick overnight. He didn't feel well, so he didn't get to enjoy the wonderful chocolate cake and special dinner Mamiji had put together for him. The rest of us enjoyed it, though. 15th We took the train to Amritsar early in the morning. The ride was uneventful. Janpal got sick in the morning ...

With only a few days before we had to meet Stephanie (Charis' sister who is coming to join our adventure for a few weeks, yay!) we caught the first train out of Delhi north to the Pakistani border. Leaving out hotel in the ghetto at 6am for our train was a surreal experience. There was dense fog, narrow streets, and dozens of people sleeping on the street. The cool air settled the intense urine and garbage smells of yesterday. Inside of the train ...

... hired to develop this city from scratch. Yet they were forced to pull out of the project due to the death of one of the head planners. A new city architect was subsequently found in the Swiss designer and artist Le Corbusier who with his small Anglo-Swiss-Indian team created the now joint capital of Haryana and Punjab provinces from scratch in the early 1950s. The whole city of 1 Million inhabitants is divided up into 1200x800m super-blocks or "sectors" along a grid ...