Amritsar - Golden Temple
Trip Start
Jul 28, 2007
1
8
90
Trip End
Nov 10, 2008
Amritsar,
India
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Golden Temple at night
The Golden Temple is very beautiful especially at night. But it is the activity around the temple that is most captivating. People come by bus and truck loads! There are people everywhere praying, bathing and eating from the community kitchen. Men wear a dagger and when they undress to bath they wear it on top of their turban! I guess they're like me with my daypack; they can't separate from it! Many pilgrims sleep on the floor at night so they can enjoy the closing ceremony at night when they bring the sacred book to a resting place for the night and they stay to be woken up at 2am with the prayers and the return of the book to the temple at 4am. Everyone is so religious! They are making some renovations and they don't even need to employ people, everyone helps by carrying a few bricks! From Amritsar, it is possible to cross the border over to Pakistan. So every day, at 6pm there is a closing ceremony of the border and it has become quite a show! There are so many Indian tourists yelling and cheering. I also saw a few foreign tourists on the Pakistani side and was very envious!
Border crossing ceremony
Some Indian tourists raced back and forth with the Indian flag then a group of men carrying the flag came in. One of the soldiers then yelled for a while and they marched 2 by 2 to the gate. The gate suddenly opened and they shook hands with the Pakistanis. Then they made a little show of throwing the flag's ropes around and finally lowered the 2 flags at the same time making sure one was not higher then the other. The border closed officially and everyone rushed to the fence to take pictures!
Soldiers
Since Amritsar is in Punjab, I couldn't resist trying the wonderful food. I found a restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet and the food was so good I went 3 times. Nothing beats really authentic Punjabi food!!!
