Amritsar

This weekend I joined three friends on a trip up north to Amritsar. The original plan was to leave Thursday on a night train, sleep the whole way there, and come back Saturday on another night train, and sleep on the way back as well. However, who knew that train tickets needed to be booked farther than two days in advance? We, did not. So we were at the mercy of whatever tickets were available. It just so happened that the only trains in which there were four tickets available were at 4:30 on Friday morning, arriving twelve hours later: and we would be returning Sunday morning at 5:10 in the morning and arriving around 11:30, a nice six hours shorter than our train ride out.
So Thursday night we headed over to Andrew's host family's house for dinner around 9, for dinner and because his lovely parents offered to drive us to the train station at three. Soon after dinner, however, I was ready for bed. I ended up making it until about 1230 before I needed a nap. So those of us who fell asleep woke up at 3 as to leave by 3:30. We arrived at the train station, and ran into a couple problems. While tying to go through security, we got stopped and told that our e-ticket needed some sort of validation. After wandering around a bit, a nice man decided to take us across the street to where we needed to be. Once there, the man assisting us confirmed that we purchased our ticket in India, so there should be no problems. Ah, the joys of language barriers. So we got back to the train station and found what we thought was our platform, but there was no one really around. So Andrew asked around, and decided to go hunting for someone who would know where we were supposed to be. Five or ten minutes later, he came back and informed us that we were on the wrong platform, which was really not a big deal. We got to the correct platform and only had to wait around 20 minutes before the correct train came. The train came into the station and stopped, so we started walking towards our assigned car. But then the train started moving again. In the sleep deprived stupor we were in, somehow we all began running and yelling about jumping on the train. So, of course, that's what we did. We jumped on a moving train. Of which, stopped moving about 30 seconds after we had all gotten on. We got some interesting looks from people who were still waiting to get off. After a twelve hour train ride in a sleeper car, of which most of my time was actually spent sleeping, we arrived in Amritsar.
We decided to stay in the hostel type thing attached to the Golden Temple, so that was our first stop. There is room there for both pilgrims and tourists, both at a free will donation. The man helping us there was very kind, and showed us to a room. Our room had three beds pushed together, some lockers, and a ceiling fan. There were originally eight or so of us staying in there, but after he was that two were sleeping on the floor he moved them to a different room, which opened things up a bit. It was still quite an interesting experience. After we got signed in we decided to spend our evening at the Golden Temple. We went in and just sat around the water for three hours or so, talking, and getting pictures taken with Indian families.

Around dusk we finally decided to actually go into the Golden Temple. Inside is even more extravagant than the outside. It is full of gold, and fancy looking chandeliers and decorations. On each floor there was a center area where men were conducting readings. We made it up to the roof, and sat up there for a while while some sort of ceremony was going on as the moon was rising. Basically, we happened to go there just at the right time.

The next morning, we accidentally slept in until nearly 10, partially due to the lack of windows in our room. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself. Our first venture of the day was to Jallianwala Bagh, the site of a pre-independence massacre. British troops were ordered to open fire on a group of non-violent Indians of whom were protesting the Rowlatt Act, which in summary allowed the British colonists to imprison anyone, without trial, for up to two years under suspicion of terrorism. It is still unclear to me why the orders were made to begin shooting at the protesters. Over 300 people were killed, and many more injured. Over a hundred of those killed, died in a well while trying to flee the shooting. It was a very beautiful and well maintained garden, and incredibly hard to imagine that a massacre had happened there.

Our last main stop of the trip was the the Indian/Pakistani border. We took a 40 minute cab ride to the border, waited in lines, and got shuffled into bleachers. None of which I was really expected. It all seemed quite like a sporting event. The bleachers were packed with supportive Indians (The bleacher on the Pakistan side had fewer people due to the Muslim tradition of Ramadan in which they fast from sunrise to sunset. Who would want to come sit in the sun for a couple of hours after not eating all day?) There was also a section of bleachers for non-Indians, but somehow the girls in our group ended up on the Indian side. We waited in the heat for a while (Amritsar seemed SO much hotter than Delhi) and then they started playing music and some of the festivities began. They had young girls run the Indian flag up and down the road between the neighboring countries. About 15 minutes later a group of girls started dancing to the Bollywood music they were playing over the loudspeakers. Over time, the group grew to include boys and non-Indians as well. It was all quite entertaining. The actual ceremonial closing of the gates was incredibly interesting, and kind of confusing. Both nations had officials who ritually walked to and from the gate in official outfits and with high kicks. There was hand shaking, the singing of long notes, and the taking down of flags. It was all very formal, and seemed to excite everyone in the crowd. It was hard to see everything at the border from where we were sitting, but there was such a high energy it was hard not to enjoy.