India - Amritsar
Trip Start
Jun 17, 2009
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3
8
Trip End
Aug 15, 2009
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Amritsar,
Punjab,
India
Friday, June 26, 2009
The city of Amritsar is a nice first stop for me on the long road I will be taking through India. Its most famous attraction is The Golden Temple, the holiest shrine for the Sikhs. Sikhism is about a five hundred year old religion that was founded by a fellow named Guru Nanak. He was unhappy with Hinduism and Islam, the two dominant religions of the region at the time, so he created Sikhism by combining aspects of both religions. Nowadays, Sikhs make up about 2% of India's religions.
On my second day in Armitsar I made my way to see The Golden Temple and got my first real introduction to just how severely crowded India can be. In order to enter the temple complex you have to remove and check your shoes at a massive storage room. The process of doing this was unbelievably chaotic and the lines just to get to the window weren't fun. Once that was done you then needed to wash your feet in a filthy pool of water directly in front of the entrance that hundreds of others were using. There is no doubt in my mind that my feet came out of that water dirtier than when they went into it.
Once you enter the complex you find yourself in a massive high walled courtyard with a huge, square pool of water in it that takes up all but the edges of the courtyard. In the center of that pool sits the aptly named Golden Temple. It was just after mid-day and the sun was shining brightly causing the gold covered temple to gleam. Supposedly, the temple is gilded with over 750 kilograms of pure gold. It certainly looked it from where I was standing.
In addition to being impressed by the architecture, I also found myself marvelling at how many people were inside this place. The narrow edges around the giant pool were filled with hordes of Indians making their way around the water in a clockwise direction. After a few minutes of gawking and snapping pictures I joined the masses and fell into the procession. While making my way around with the throngs I noticed several men in their underwear bathing in the pool. I stepped out of the line, cooling my feet in 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, but I had absolutely no problem at all with it on that enjoyable day.
On the way out of the courtyard I made my way up a very narrow set of stairs into the surprisingly interesting Sikh Museum. It turned out to be a massive gallery of various paintings depicting the history of Sikhism as well as containing portraits of nearly all of the Gurus and other personalities important to the religion. Some of the paintings were shockingly violent, but overall, the museum was fascinating.
Although I haven't been in India long I can definitely say so far so good. The crowds might prove to be a big challenge, as I've seen with booking train tickets, but the jury is still out. I'm going to spend a few more days in my very comfortable and cheap hotel to further acclimatize myself to this planet of a country before moving on to the big time in Delhi...
