Gil, the Israeli fellow and I took 2 deeply bone-shaking government buses 180km from McCleod Ganj to Amritsar. You'd think that travelling 180km would take a couple of hours, but in India, it takes 7.5, like a 50 over cricket match. The drive was beautiful! We rode along a river with terraced fields on the other side and people doing their laundry in the river and farming n' stuff. After a while, I noticed that the river was almost completely dry and the river bed much wider, about 150 feet across. I guess there was a dam somewhere that I missed or else something much bigger and worse had happened. Either way it was a real bummer to see the river's corpse, now a place for kids to play cricket. The first bus made it to Pathankot, the city in Punjab where we were to transfer to an Amritsar-bound bus. Before it got to the station, the rickety old bus ricketed for the last time as it sounded like it ran over a rickshaw, but we kept driving and 30 feet later the sound rattled us again and the bus came to a stop. The drive turned off the engine and got out to inspect. He didn't come back and we all looked at each other before deciding to get out and hop a rickshaw to the bus station. Outside the bus, I couldsee the driveshaft snapped in two and lying on the road beneath the bus. It seems that cars and buses are driven into the ground without repair or maintenance, until something big snaps or explodes. This was a government bus, mind ye. Were I a fiscal conservative, I'm sure I'd have something snappy to say.
The station in Pathankot was guarded by an army of auto-rickshaws unlike any I'd seen so far with sinister looking yellow grills from the distant past or the terrible Mad-Max era future. That's the kind of stuff that turns my crank. We bought our tickets and hopped the bus to Amritsar. The next portion of the journey took 4 hours to go 90km. This bus was far more packed than the first one. There were lots of Sikh pilgrims with their oiled beards and families. We arrived in Amritsar around 730pm and hopped a bike rickshaw to a hotel and decided to meet up for breakfast and the Golden Temple the next day.
Before Gil and I met up for breakfast, I walked around for a bit in the old city. The sky was dark gray and it was drizzling, which made everything gloomily beautiful. The buildings and decay and the darkness were unlike anything I"d seen so far in India. Very 3rd world, in the best possible way.
After breakfast, on our way to the Golden Temple, we were approached by a middle aged guy with jet black dyed hair (instead of the normal henna red/gold) who offered a $2 ride to the border in a shared taxi for the border closing ceremony, where the Pakistani and Indian soldiers try to out-ridiculous each other with marching and pomp (so I had read). After walking away from him due to the steep $1 reservation fee, he followed us offering a $.40 reservation fee. We paid him and were told to be back at that spot at 2:45 to get the taxi which left at 3.
The Golden Temple is the #1 Sikh temple in the world and for good reason. After depositing our shoes in a shoe depository, we walked bare foot on carpets wet with light brown water with hundreds of other tourists (mostly Indian) and Sikhs who came to spend the day. There are dudes who sell orange headscarves for the visitors, as covering your head is mandatory upon entrance. We decided not to spend the 10 Rs and just go in anyway, as we were sure that we could just get us some headcovering inside. We met a Hindu guy about my age just before the entrance who explained to us that we could use one of the free headscarves in the temple and that there was no need to play the $.20 on the street. We went in, walked through the marble trough of water to clean our feet of the street grime and entered into the massive complex.
The Golden temple itself is a 2 story building set in a rectangular pool surrounded by a larger rectangular 2 story building of white marble. Two white marble clock towers loomed on either side and a reddish community kitchen was opposite the Temple. People were getting all holy and praying and doing their things, bowing to the temple, stripping down to their shorts and taking a dip in the carp-inhabited holy "nectar" that filled the pool, and walking the carpet that surrounded the pool. We walked around to the temple queue and got in quickly (this is the down season). The first floor of the Golden Temple houses the house band which consists of 2 gold-plated harmonium players and a tabla player, all singing into gold-plated mics on gold plated stands with gold plated mic cables. They were surrounded by a gold plated bannister with bars that people would throw money through. A holy man with a long flat knife (kinda like a cake cutter) would scrape the bills and coins together and the cram them into a box with a slot. He, somewhat violently, stabbed the money down into the box with his knife as the band jammed up a storm, playing a very long and interesting, but repetitive song.
We walked around to a staircase that went up to the second floor where people sat on the carpeted balcony at eyelevel with the giant chandelier that hung from the ceiling over the house band. Some read prayer books, some just chilled. We found the main holy man reading a GIANT holy book that must have been 5 feet across. People would drop money into the slot in the box in front of him as he sat stoically and read, I guess. Sounds like a pretty boring job, but it sure seems like it pays well. I watched a video about Amritsar that showed, in high season, the Sikh accountants making giant bricks of cash, tying them in scarves, and hauling it off to the bank. $2 million a week, when it was good. We headed up to the roof where a couple of guards stood with giant blades on long staves and had an Indian tourist take our awkward picture where it's clear that Gil and I are not enthused about being so near each other.
After exiting the temple we headed out to the perimeter and into a courtyard where the entrance to the community kitchen was. Outside, there were groups of people peeling garlic, peas, doing other prep work while sitting in circles on the ground . We got in line and were handed a steel plate and steel bowl to take up to the second floor of the cafeteria which was a huge room with long runners that ran the length of the room spaced 8 or so feet apart where we sat cross legged with the faithful. Dudes came by with buckets of dal, rice, vegetable curry and scooped portions onto our plates. Another guy came by with basket of chipattis and dropped them into our hands. The food was great and seconds were offered. A guy came by with a big aluminum kettle and filled our bowls with water. When I'd finished my food, the dal guy came by again and, noticing that I hadn't touched my water, said that it was safe for me to drink as it had been filtered on the roof. Since I had an 8 hour train ride the next day, I decided to disbelieve him and not drink it. The water also had some chunks that fell to the bottom, so I was less convinced of the safety, but I would have drunk it as a challenge had I not had to travel.
All the barefoot walking on marble and thin carpets was rough on my pampered western feet. I was thrilled to get back to the shoe depository and get my shoes back on, after rinsing the street grime off them with my tourist's water bottle.
We got lunch then split up before returning to the taxi pickup spot where we found our guy having an argument with other taxi reservation guys, none of which I understood, obviously. There was an Indian couple waiting with us who looked like they were Muslim. When our driver arrived, the reservation guy told us, the westerners to pay up before hand and I was all, hells naw, I'll pay the driver when we return. This ain't Orbitz, which he protested for a minute and then seemed to forget about it. We followed the driver to a parking garage a half Km away where 7 or us crammed into his little tour van and off we drove, an hour to the border, past more rapeseed fields and lots of cattle farms and straw houses.
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| excited by rapeseed |
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| our black-haired hero protests |
We arrived at the border parking lot where there were tons of tuk tuks, buses, and taxis. We got out and the driver asked for the $4 for the both of us. I gave him $2 for the first half of the trip and told him I'd give him the rest upon our safe return. Somehow he forgot to ask the Indians in the van for their fare. As Gil and I were walking to the border down a wide lane lined with barbed wire on either side and Indian army buildings behind it, a guy approached us and asked if he could take a picture of his wife and her friend with us. Of course! I only had pictures of me with dudes at this point, so I jumped on this rare opportunity to have my photo taken with someone who wasn't a 14-30 year old male. I wonder what happened to that picture!
We continued down the lane until we reached the border crossing which had stadium seating on the south sides of the lane with a gate in the middle and the border crossing admin building on the North side. The India side was packed with Indians and a few tourists, but the Pakistani side was sparsely populated. Chants of "Hindustan something something" erupted periodically from our side and I'm sure the Pakistanis were chanting something too, but I couldn't hear it. The border guards wear (and I'm sure enjoy) these ridiculous outfits that look like...
I imagine that the border guard gig is a highly prized line of work. Those dudes obviously enjoy themselves.
This video explains it pretty well.
When the border closing ceremony finished, we walked back to the van and while waiting for the other passengers, I bought a couple packs of bidis for the friends back home for 10Rs a piece. We got in the van and headed back. That night, I walked around and found a tshirt salesman who had a lime green t shirt for sale that had an iron-on portrait of Kurt Cobain's face with some flowers and skulls that said, like the gigantic poster that I taped to the ceiling above my bed as a 13 year old, "I hate myself and I want to die" (since I was already in therapy, I guess my mom didn't think too too much of it. Either that, or her newly acquired psychology degree told her that adolescent boys weren't really a threat to themselves, just really fucking stupid). Anyway, I didn't care how much the shirt cost, I had to have it. For $2 it was mine. Unfortunately it shrunk like crazy when I washed it and is only suitable for occasions where my abs must be seen by all. Fortunately, I've decided those occasions happen 3X a day.
The next day I took a bike rickshaw to the train station in the rain. I bargained with the driver (a 30ish guy who was friendly, but spoke no English) for a 35Rs fare which was really fucking cheap and I tipped him quite a bit to make up for my earlier transportation payment mistakes. I got on the train and arrived back in Delhi and made a beeline for the AMAX hotel where I had dinner on the roof by myself as I heard the silly travel stories of the drunken (or maybe just obnoxious) kids who were best friends for the night at the big table.
I went to bed and woke up at 330 to get my things together to catch a 4am taxi to the airport where I had a hell of a time getting into the airport without a ticket. An army guard didn't allow me entrance so I waited outside while a British Air guy ran back inside to grab a manifest which I wasn't on. I gave him my name, which he wrote on his hand and ran back inside while the army guard stood firm. Finally, after 15 minutes, the BA guy came back and took me inside where I got my boarding pass, had my bag searched at security and at the gate. Finally they allowed me on the plane and I was outta there!
Put that in your gold-plated Skull Bong and smoke it.
