Last Saturday Jocelyn, Gusti and I set off in a taxi from McLo at 7am to drive to Amritsar. We had two aims in mind for the weekend trip – to see the evening border-closing ceremony at Wagah on the India/Pakistan border, and to visit the famous Golden Temple.
As we drove down the road we were thrilled to spot a snow monkey sitting by the path leading down to the Tibet Library. It bounded off down the hill in great leaps – no doubt keen to get in a bit of early morning reading. They are such wonderful monkeys – very yeti-like.
The trip to Amritsar took us out of the mountains quite quickly, and it was interesting to see how the forest changed. It became quite lush and tropical, and even reminded me a bit of driving in Samoa. The barley crop is ripe at the moment and there were wonderful views of terraced hillsides filled with gleaming golden barley, the terraces edged with bright green grass.
After a couple of hours we stopped for a welcome stretch of the legs (it was a very small taxi), chai and second breakfast at a neat hotel with a five-star toilet and a lovely flower garden – quite a novelty after McLo where flowers don’t exist except occasionally in pots. The Dalai Lama stopped at the same restaurant last month en route to the airport (and had dahl and rice, the waiter told us.)
Shortly after getting back on the road we crossed a bridge and were in the Punjab, a much wealthier state than Himachal Pradesh. They have proper two lane roads, and even four lane highways in a few places. And – they have the most enormous lot of marijuana I’ve ever seen in my life, growing wild on the side of the road. You could keep NZ permanently stoned for a century on what we saw!
After that excitement we settled down and really just waited to get there. The Punjab is quite flat, and we passed huge fields of barley where the harvest was in full swing, both with combine harvesters and people wielding scythes. Huge stacks of filled sacks were waiting to be taken away. There were also a lot of brick works, which I have heard is a place where child labour is rife, but the workers we saw were all adults. We also noticed an interesting innovation in rooftop water tanks – someone had had the bright idea of shaping and painting them like a giant football (soccer, of course) and the idea had clearly caught on.
As we approached the city of Amritsar we got tangled up in the usual chaotic traffic - cars, buses, taxis, cows, horse-drawn carts, motorbikes and bicycles carrying ridiculously high loads, tuk-tuks and pedestrians all vying for space. It was at this point that we realised our driver didn’t know the way to our hotel in the old part of the city. However after stopping a lot and shouting questions to the nearest man in the street, loafer, chai wallah or cyclist, he eventually made it to a carpark near the Golden Temple, where we made him ring the hotel and ask for directions. Not too long afterwards we were at the MK Sood Guesthouse in Mahna Singh Road, five minutes’ walk from the Golden Temple, and well worth the comparatively modest price of our rooms.
The India/Pakistan Border: After a short rest and shower we set off for the border. We drove about half an hour, then had to park and walk the rest of the way. By the time we were half way there the rain was hosing down, stopped, and then came down again harder than ever. We huddled under our one umbrella and slopped our way up the road the kilometre or so to the grandstands where the ceremony takes place. Thousands of others – mostly Indians, were also doing the walk.
Once we arrived we took the VIP lane reserved for foreigners, and after a quick frisk (you can only take a camera and money with you, no bags) we found places on the concrete grandstand (standing room only for us – we weren’t big enough VIPs to have the seats), and waited for the fun to begin.
I’m sure lots of people have tried to describe what happens at Wagah every evening. It really is hard to imagine if you haven’t seen it. It’s a mixture of theatre, comedy and nationalism, with a huge dose of tongue-in-cheek thrown in.
The warm-up included members of the crowd being issued with huge Indian flags and running up to the border gates (which were closed), big groups of women doing Bollywood-like dances, and an enormous guy in a white track suit revving the crowd up to cheer and shout. Similar things were happening on the Pakistan side – we could see their grandstand over the border wall.
As the time for the ceremony grew nearer the rain stopped, fortunately, and more and more people arrived until the grandstands were packed. We discovered that the border soldiers had a very effective method of crowd control. If they want you to move further up the grandstand, or squash up, or whatever, they come up to you with their large and lethal looking gun in hand and blow a piercing whistle blast in your face. Works every time!
The ceremony itself involved soldiers going up to the gate, (which was opened by this time), saluting, and doing the most amazing high kicks. For example, soldier (with bright orange hat crowned with huge cockade, making him look like an enraged cockerel), marches briskly to the gate, stops and does a straight legged kick that takes his foot well above his head. Stops, does the Ceremonial Arranging of the Hat, which has been nearly dislodged by this move, turns and salutes officer. Officer barks something like “Soldier! Have you advanced toward the enemy?” Soldier: “Yes Sir! I advanced and gave him a good kicking!” (Same thing is happening on the Pakistani side.)
One after another about eight soldiers went through this routine, with a few interesting variations such as the Very Fast March that’s almost a Run, Two Soldiers doing it Together, and the Facing the Gate in a Very Belligerent Attitude with Clenched Fists. Then, once the whole squad was lined up in front of the gate there was the brief Ceremonial Shaking of the Hands, the Flinging in the Air of the Rope that Holds the Flag, and finally the Taking Down of the Flag and the ceremonial folding and taking it away for the night. Then after another Ceremonial handshake and a bit more kicking, the gates were closed.
While all this was going on both crowds contributed with all their might, egged on by the guy in the white tracksuit on the Indian side, and the man with the big drum on the Pakistani side. There was shouting, whooping, singing, shouting of “Pakistan” and “Hindustan” – all carefully choreographed, so that both sides got equal shouting time. In all, a jolly good time was had by everyone, including the soldiers, and I think every border should have one as a very effective tension de-fuser.
Walking back to the car was like going through a fun fair – stalls everywhere selling all sorts of stuff, food and chai sellers, candy floss, people selling DVDs of the ceremony – it’s clearly great for the local economy.
The Golden Temple – altogether a different experience but also very impressive. Amritsar is chaotic – but walk inside the gleaming white walls of the biggest Sikh temple in India and it’s all calm and lovely – like another world, really. Other people have commented on how friendly the atmosphere is and we certainly felt that. The vast complex is built around the Golden Temple itself which gleams in the sun in the day and looks quite unearthly under lights at night, reflected in the huge Holy Tank which people bathe in (ceremonially) and which also contains some enormous goldfish.
The aspect of the Golden Temple which I found most mind-boggling was the organisation which feeds around 30,000 people a day – for free. In the kitchen area there were huge fires with gigantic pots cooking up rice and dahl, rows of volunteers making chapattis while others sliced up huge piles of ginger or washed up the metal plates, with a terrific banging and clanging noise. Many people sleep in the temple and at night when we visited the first time they were all stretched out on the marble floor under the arcades which line the four sides of the temple complex. Beautiful piped devotional music filled the air.
We lined up for free chai (out of a large metal tank) and also joined the queue for the morning issue of hot prasad (sweetened semolina, I think it was) which came in delicate little leaf bowls and for which you gave a donation. I’ll post some photos – but I’d definitely recommend it as a place to go – visually stunning, clean and very well maintained, tranquil and very welcoming.
NB You have to take your shoes off when you go in, and leave them at a shoe storage area. We took ours with us in our bags and found out that it’s not acceptable to the Sikhs to have shoes in the complex, in a bag or not. So if you want to do the right thing, use the shoe storage place (and hope they don’t lose your shoes among the thousands…)
If you liked this story, you might be interested in reading "Between Monks and Monkeys", written after my first time in Dharamshala in 2010. Available as an Ebook for US$1.99 on Kindle, NOOK, I-tunes etc, or as a paperback (email me for details.) 