Getting to Amritsar is a chore. Though less than 300 miles from Delhi, it's hard to find a train journey shorter than 10 hours (do the math) and even harder to buy a ticket for a train journey, since one has to have an Indian phone number in order to register for the website, which requires an Indian phone, which requires a passport and other documentation, and so on. And the website's only open for a small portion of the day, so if you want to book your train journey at night, that's just too bad. After enlisting a small army of tour operators and hotel staff to help us book tickets, and after seriously investigating alternative (though no more accessible) destinations, we (that is, myself and the colleague who joined me on the trip) ultimately forewent the train and booked a flight. On an airline we'd never heard of before, but what the hell, it got us there.
Amritsar: not the prettiest city, but site of several important things. Thing one: the Golden Temple, sanctum stanctorum of the Sikh faith, a very active pilgrimage complex with pool for wading, gigantic dining hall for free meals of chapatis and dal (dude next to us tells me it feeds 2 lakh people a day, that's 200,000), and the eponymous temple. Seized by Sikh separatists in the early '80s and stormed by the Indian Army in 1984; many innocent people died, then Indira Gandhi died, then hundreds of innocent Sikhs died in the fallout. You'd never know it today (though I'm told there are still some bullet holes at the temple): no security, apart from some burly Sikhs with harpoons who may or may not be keeping an eye on the crowd - no scanners or checkpoints - and thousands upon thousands of people, Sikh pilgrims as well as non-Sikh tourists (almost all Indian), flowing in and out by the hour. It's a friendly and welcoming place: Sikhs bathe, Sikhs pray, strangers ask to take their photos with us, people stand patiently in a very long line to enter the inner temple. It looks like this (note the massive queue on the left):
We eventually got in that queue, but had a few things to do first: buy orange bandanas to cover our heads, leave shoes and socks at counter, walk barefooted through mote of stagnant water in ritual footcleansing, squish along soggy mats laid out along pool, gawk at Sikh men swimming, wander into dining hall, watch men briskly ladle lentils and fling chapatis onto metal plates, eat lentils and chapatis, watch hundreds of volunteers gather and clean metal plates, gawk at impossibly filthy man who catches filthy plates flung rapidly at him and arranges them in giant buckets, and perambulate the remainder of the complex. Some of those things looked like this:
Standing in the queue wasn't so bad, because they had plenty of golden fans set up and some nice music being piped in. Took about half an hour - had a bit of a scare when, at about minute 25, the music changed and the crowd started chanting and the queue stopped moving while they performed some sort of ceremony - but it didn't last that long, and actually the spontaneous chanting and praying was quite moving, and we soon got inside. Couldn't take pictures, though, so you'll just have to believe me that there's a gigantic giraffe inside wearing a bow tie. Not really. it was actually the piped music was being performed live, by a small band (which included an ornate golden synthesizer) and readers/singers who take turn reading/singing the Sikh scriptures, nonstop, all day long. There was also a punkah-wallah and a small congregation of men, women, and children, all worshipping quietly together in a dark but beautiful little space.
Having not thought to bring in bottles of water, and not trusting the free water on offer, we were quite parched when we exited. So we bought some 5 rupee Sprites, the best Sprite I ever consumed, and managed to meet a linguist in the process.
Thing two: the Jallianwala Bagh, site of the 1919 massacre of peaceful demonstrators by British troops. A short walk from the Golden Temple. Have taught about this thing for years, and even wrote an article about it, so it was interesting to see how the space is being used today. First impression that struck is: it's much bigger than we'd thought, the size of several football fields, and the killing seems to have taken place all over the site. Plenty of interpretive plaques, mostly taking a strong nationalist line (denouncing British "tyranny," honoring the "martyrs," etc), but the crowd wasn't taking it too solemnly. It was a hot Saturday and great numbers of tourists (again, almost all Indians) were milling around - laughing, taking pictures (of us and themselves), lounging in the shade, picnicking. There are some strange decorative elements to the place, including barbed wire that wouldn't have been there in 1919 and some wire doodads intended to train plants into the shape of gunmen. The latter looked like this:
There were also walls with bullet holes and a well where hundreds of people had jumped to avoid the bullets. Not a solemn space at all, unless you carefully considered what had happened there, which I tried to do.
Thing three: this isn't strictly within Amritsar, but it's close enough to make an easy trip. The Wagah border ceremony, something I've also talked about in class (I show them a YouTube video) and was eager to see. In what we were coming to see as typical of Indian queue management, a great crowd of pushy, shovey people gathered at the gate into the border zone about an hour before the gates opened. Among those people were we, swaying and sweating and dearly wishing we had chosen a later time to arrive. After quite a bit of cruel teasing the guards finally opened the gate and the crowd surged to another gate, this one a security check, and then to another, and then another. We finally made it through, soaked and cranky, to the VIP and foreigners section. From here we watched what must be one of the strangest nightly rituals on earth: part rock concert, part dance party, part sporting event, and part aggressive nationalist display. Outdoor amphitheaters on both the Indian and Pakistani side held hundreds of spectators who munched on concession food, took photos with guards, waved flags, joined chants led by a tall white-clad cheerleader, and danced to Bollywood hits. The men were separated from the women, and the women's side was tremendously colorful. It looked like this:
After a happy half-hour the ceremony started. Guards, some of them putting on their most theatrical angry-faces and some seemingly amused, preened and stomped and shuffled and scowled. Wasn't able to get any terribly good photos (they were moving too fast), but this will give you the idea:
For more, I recommend this video.
This went on for about half an hour and then we climbed, exhausted and a little woozy, into the taxi of a murderous Sikh driver who shot us back across the Punjab countryside to the serenity of our colonial-era bungalow compound.
Day 8: Sunday, July 7
Quieter day, this. Cows walking the halls in the compound in the morning gave us quite a shock, but a pleased shock. Then a short trip to the Ram Bagh, the summer palace of Maharajah Ranjith Singh, which supposedly has a museum but we were only able to find the life-size panorama extolling the Maharajah's many brilliant exploits against the Afghans, Kashmiris, and other people. The French may have helped him just a bit, but we couldn't be sure. The panorama was quite stirring, but the grounds themselves were a little sad. The former looked like this (I didn't bother photographing the latter):
Then a bit of shopping and back to Delhi and the creature comforts of our fancy hotel, proud that we had poked our heads outside the planned-and-packaged bubble for a few days and encountered a few of the world's most interesting things.
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