Ritz Plaza Hotel Amritsar

... which was quite a luxury - Gary got to watch a bit of cricket and we watched an old Sherlock Homes film and a bit of Gandhi (but in Hindi!). The weekend we arrived was Gandhi's birthday weekend and the city was full of Indian and foreign tourists all wanting to see the Golden Temple and Jallianwalla Bagh where the great massacre took place during Gandhi's era. Quite an earie place to visit - busy with tourists of ...

... areas except inside the Golden Temple itself. (This last bit is a surprise, as I have seen a live television feed on cable TV which is on from 4 AM til midnight and broadcast statewide.) <br><br>The temple itself has three levels. You cue up in a line, there are food offerings at the front door for devotees to take home. One the second floor, there is a Sikh holy man who is seated in front of a giant book, covered in golden fabric. On his left is the music dept ...

... the Golden Temple, pilgrimage site and holy place for the Sikh religion. I walked in and crucified the bottoms of my feet as it is obligitory to enter bare foot. The intensely solar-heated marble made it feel like walking over a fire. Taking my bags to the hostel within the temple I was surprised to see about 20 caucasians in the foreigners' dorm. There I met 2 Israelis, an American and a Frenchman who invited me along to the tourist spectacle at ...

... gun which kept blaring his sirens, he couldn&#8217;t have drawn more attention to us if he tried. We were then shut in our hotel for the night and not even allowed out for dinner. The courtyard of the hotel there was lovely and shady with springy grass and cold beers (the first since Iran) so it wasn&#8217;t too bad. The next night we were taken to a police compound in Loralai where we actually got to meet some locals and we were allowed into town (escorted by ...

... of the complex, there are various rooms where you are allowed to sleep for three nights for free, and there is a dining hall where you are allowed free food and water any time of day any time of year. They have stalls depositing bowls of water (triple filtered, so we felt confident drinking it) and there are always people kneeling in prayer facing the temple. There are also areas in which there are people bathing. Culturally, the temple is the most significant place of ...

... br> <br> <br><br>Traveling is fun, no doubt but it does get difficult at times. Especially in developing countries where you stick out like a sore thumb. Sometimes, it gets too much and you have a little breakdown and then you get over it, or at least I do, quite quickly.....the sweet just ain't as sweet without the sour.<br><br><br><br>I'm heading now to catch my 18 hour no a/c train to the pink city of Jaipur, gonna see some palaces and stuff. Yay! I'm really excited!

... Altho&#8217; this follows the spirit of the Sikh religion, so many checks are now in place to counter possible recurrences of recent acts of terrorism. Security staff check both individuals and bags, with photography banned in most public buildings. I even had to provide copies of my passport and visa just to get a local SIM card!<br><br>I enjoyed two more meals in the dining room before making a donation to the temple and taking the free bus back to the train ...

... MC, doing their own cheering. I guess it was just more important to scream louder than the Pakistani side (which wasn't hard becuase there weren't too many people sitting over there). We were sitting in a special foreigners section, way in the back, near the guys waving flags. So, I missed the big moment where a guard from the India side shook hands with a guard from the Pakistan side as the guy holding the flag over my head was so into it that he let the flag lower a bit, right ...

... it to my head and returned to the entrance. The same guard looked at me again and shook his head. "No bags". He instructed. "Not even this enormous rucksack I'm traveling the globe with?" I thought, but dared not say. He had a massive beard and that can be v**y intimidating. Luckily they have baggage areas for just this eventuality so I quickly stowed the rucksack away and returned to the guard. He shook his head again. "Eh? What this time?" Head cov**ed ...

... in the park against colonial rule when Dyer, without any warning, ordered his 150 troops to open fire on the unarmed crowd. The park is a small enclosed space entered via a narrow alleyway and it ...