Ranjit's Svaasa Itc Welcomgroup Amritsar

... food and prayed to the gods. walk through blessed water and if u wanted to u can even wash in it. prays and music are balsted across the temple. u must take off your shoes and wear a head scarf, even men.

we ate more curries in the evening andf then went to bed pretty early. tonight we are off to the border of pakistan where we can watch a ceremony. then tomorrow morning we are off at 5am to delhi. cannot wait for all the shopping!!!!!

... wanting to see where it happened but the walls are still riddled with bullett holes and you can see how deep the well is where hundreds of people died trying to escape the bulletts by jumping in .
The Golden Temple was also heaving and it was not possible for us to go inside the temple - but we walked around the lake and could hear the music coming from the musicians who play all day. We had our first Indian Thalis - a ...

... General Avery, I believe, opened fire on the unarmed women and children. Hundreds were killed here. This massacre was the reason that Mahatma Gandhi began his civil disobedience campaign which eventually forced the British to relinquish their colonial authority.

After the Brits left India to her Independence in 1947,there has been a strong independence movement within the Sikh community. India has resisted this desire for a separate state. In 1984, this ...

How nice to be on an air conditioned train for 3 hours just sitting back and relaxing reading the Times of India and eating the complementary food, all for just a couple of quid. Arrived in Amritsar in the absolute heat of the day and managed to find a rickshaw to the Golden Temple. It was officially 50 degrees celsuis and even the locals looked desheveled, my poor guy had to stop twice for water on the 1.5 km ride.

At 2 I finally arrived ...

... see" museum. The museum I can only assume was also ****. Although I arrived (despite the best efforts of my one armed, no change giving, bumbling ****-wit of a ricksaw driv**, who tried to deposit me three times at the wrong place before a man on a bike took pity on me and took me for free) and bought a ticket, I was unable to visit the museum. I neglected to check about available electricity. Not wanting to feel my way around I left. My convictions regarding sightseeing are again ...

Beautiful Amritsar. The Promised Land. We stayed in 101 year old Mrs. Bhandari's Guest House, with a swimming pool and cold beer. Shangri-La! Oh, and there are COWS in my hotel. Oh yes. I love India.

We only originally intended to spend three nights in Amritsar, but many of the members of our group had been infected with the dreaded Delhi-belly (some so bad that they were throwing up blood…), so in the end we stayed for four nights. I was still lucky enough to ...

... 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 ...

... inside singing it...actually there's a "band" in there and I think they may take turns. They all had very beautiful voices and it was so lovely to just sit there and watch the people go by, see them bathe in the water, bow on their knees in front of the temple, or just stare at the temple as the sun set. Very peaceful.





(Hey Leanne, I finally got to see a Golden Temple! not in Kyoto but still!)

The city itself is quite ...

My arrival in Delhi was a fairly dramatic affair as I made my way to what I thought would be a reasonable room to rent. The Lonely Planet made no reference to the place being the disgustingly filthy place it turned out to be, with really smelly odours and no windows in some of the rooms. The sheets hadn't been changed for weeks and the bathrooms were appalling. What was of more surprise was how many backpackers were staying in them!! I toured and viewed the rooms of ...

... like each oth** one bit. The really fun part was when our throng of Indians had to go through a metal detector one at a time to get in the stadium. Just the one detector for ev**yone. So imagine a crowd of 25000 religiously f**vent individuals pushing and shoving their way to the bord** only to then be squeezed though a metal detector one at a time. It was the v**y definition of a bottle neck. Aft** all this, such was the trouble getting out of the spot I ...