The Punjab - Go North, My Son!

At 4am, Main Bazaar in Paharganj is almost entirely deserted. The street, a hive of activity during the daylight, becomes a ghost-town of overhanging buildings, darkened neon signs, and haphazardly-parked autorickshaws (with shawl-wrapped drivers snoring in the back seat). I walked slowly down towards the train station, my footprints sinking deeper in the mud due to the 30kgs of luggage hanging from my body. Without warning, a pair of rangy stray dogs burst out from an alleyway and started circling me, snarling. I swung my tripod threateningly and backed away slowly. The dogs followed me, growling and barking, until I reached the main road, at which point they decided I wasn't a threat and vanished back into the murky gloom. I checked to make sure that I hadn't shat myself (I hadn't, but it was a near thing), and found the platform for my train. It was now 4:15am.



Some twelve hours later, I was standing on another train platform, this time in Amritsar, a medium-sized city in the west of Punjab that is the focal point of the Sikh religion. I packed into an autorickshaw along with nine or ten laughing Sikh teenagers I'd met on the train, and we made our bumpy, slow way off towards the Golden Temple. I had intended to stay in one of the free dormitories available to all, Sikhs and non-Sikhs alike, but it soon became apparent that I didn't stand a chance - the holiday season was in full swing, and the city was jam-packed with tourists (almost universally Indian). After being turned away with a regretful smile from the Golden Temple dormitories, I wandered around the old city until I found a relatively cheap room. I dumped my pack and went out for an icecream.



The next day, I woke up to find the city smothered in fog. And I mean fog - the kind of pea-souper shit that limits your visibility to tens of metres. I switched on the television to find that Indira Gandhi Airport in Delhi had been completely shut down, with multiple flights cancelled and many more diverted to Mumbai. (Apparently this happens on a regular basis at this time of the year.)

After eating a few parathas for breakfast in a friendly Punjabi restaurant, I wrapped my head in a gaudy orange scarf and strode off towards the Golden Temple. After removing my shoes and washing my feet in thoughtfully warmed water, I walked inside. The temple is essentially a rectangular complex, dominated by the waters of the Amrit Sarovar (Pool of Nectar, from which the city takes it's name). The golden gurdwara itself rests like an ingot of, well, gold on an island in the middle of the pool, reached by a narrow causeway from the parkarma, the stone walkway that rings the pool. Pilgrims, tourists, and religious authorities stroll side by side around the parkarma, stopping to chat, bathe, and take innumerable photos. The only people without smiles on their faces are the scowling, spear-carrying guardsmen. I have to say, it is a stunning place, although the ever-present haze combined with the undissipating fog made photography extremely difficult.








I browsed through the Sikh museum, which had a collection of the most gruesome and unsettling paintings I have yet to see outside a Hieronymous Bosch exhibition. (One particularly visceral one showed a Sikh being martyred in Delhi by being sawn in half - lengthways.) I ate a quick lunch in the communal dining hall. This is a feature of every Sikh temple, a gesture of openness and unity towards people of all (and none, in my case) faiths. Let me describe the experience: you join a line, and are given a metal tray. You then proceed inside a massive hall, where you sit cross-legged, side by side with people you wouldn't know from a bar of soap. Sikh volunteers stride up and down the rows dispensing dhal and rice from buckets the size of a small child, and flinging chapattis about like frisbees. Once your row has finished, you stand up and file out again, giving the tray to another group of volunteers (where it will be washed with a pressure hose), and pause to make a completely voluntary donation if you are so inclined.

After my food had settled, I went in search of another famous landmark of Amritsar, the Jallianwala Bagh. Here, in 1917, soldiers of the waning British Raj, under the command of one General Dyer, massacred hundreds of peaceful demonstrators protesting the introduction of "emergency anti-sedition legislation" allowing for indefinite detention without trial (sound familiar?). I finally found it - a park ringed on all sides by buildings, it can only be reached through a narrow alleyway off one of the main streets. The mood here was bizarre: laughing, chattering Indian tourists pose for photos besides eternal flame monuments, and children play chase past the so-called Martyr's Well, where over a hundred and twenty people drowned trying to escape the carnage above. The neatly categorised bullet holes in the wall are a mute testimony that this is a country that is no stranger to tragedy and undeserved violence.







To shake my gloomy mood, I went off to the newer portion of the city, walking through the old bazaars to get there. I found a "tandoori chicken emporium", and ate platefuls of the most delicious tandoori chicken I have ever encountered. I got an autorickshaw back through the chill night to my hotel, and on a whim decided to visit the Golden Temple again. I walked reverentially through the gurdhara itself, listening to the chanting of the priests, and finally managed to take a decent photo that shows off the temple in all it's magnificence:





The next day I got up at 4am (again!), and headed for the station (again!), this time avoiding the attention of any stray dogs. Ten odd hours of commuting left me in Chandigarh - stay tuned for the next installment!