Amritsar

We arrived in Amritsar a few days ago. And by pure skill (ie our usual combination of complete luck and mistiming) we have been here over the festival of Vaisakhi. I am reliably informed by Gary that this marks the harvest celebrations and solar new year for Sihks. And of course Amritsar has one of their holiest temples – the Golden temple.

With our usual talent, we thought we’d visit the Golden temple the day before the festival, so it wouldn’t be too busy. But it was busy! People everywhere – nice, colourful, and very good natured. Lots and lots of huge turbans on display. And although you could walk relatively easily around the huge sacred pool that surrounds the Golden temple, the walkway leading to the temple itself had hundreds of people on it, crammed together, queuing. They must each have waited for hours to get to the building. We wondered if it was because of the imminent festival, but only found out after we’d left that we’d actually got the date wrong and it WAS Vaisakhi!

Anyway, we had a very pleasant walk around Amritsar, visiting the silver temple as well as the Golden one. The silver temple is a Hindu version of the Golden temple – just not so big, not so Golden (it has gold plate on the front, but this runs out when you go around the sides), and the pool around the temple building doesn’t have the fantastic coi carp you can see in the Golden temple’s. But it’s still nice – and was very festive yesterday.

Anyway, we’ll be moving on to Chandigar tomorrow by bus. This should be very different, as where Amritsar is a bustling old town (with a few modern bits) Chandigar was built only in the last century after Partition to be the new capital of Punjab. So It’s meant to be the most modern town in India. It should therefore have lots of internet cafes, so we’ll write soon!