Golden Temple, Check!

Wow. What a great weekend! We had such a nice time. I'm so glad that we went, despite the 12 hours our so we had to spend on the train.

On Friday I had packed my bags and brought them to the office as I thought we were leaving right from there. Thankfully, I had mentioned something to the gal at work because plans had changed. Our train left at 715am, not 5-ish. I went back to the hotel - actually, that was better I thought as then I could shower, etc and get a few hours of sleep. I went right to the front desk as I had spoken to the duty manager before leaving to "double lock" my room. The guy that cleans my room explained that this would protect both him and me and prohibiting anyone, except the manager to enter my room. I thought that was a good idea and thought I had it arranged. When the front desk guy gave me a new key, I realized that it had not been done. "Where is this 5 star service?" I told the guy (now keep in mind it's about 4 am) that "if I have to come back down here because I can't get into my room, I'll be furious!" He assured me that I would and he was right. I got ready for a little nap and saw a roach. I blinked again, hoping that I was seeing things and saw another! For a split second I thought I'd forget about it... but then decided to call. Of course there was a lot of pomp and circumstance as the manager and another guy came to remove the roaches.... at one point I was in my bath tub with the 2 men in there - before removing the roaches, they removed me. I thought to myself, "I hope this isn't a snip-it of what's to come for the weekend."

My friend and her husband picked me up on the way to the train station. I had told them to meet me there however they insisted otherwise. I'm glad they did. The station was pure chaos. We found our train and seats - I was actually pleasantly surprised! It was clean and nice! We took off. Before long stewards and stewardesses were giving us breakfast! Very similar to a plane! I didn't want to miss a thing, so I had my nose pressed against the window for as long as I could. What I saw was interesting. A lot of trash and quite a few people with make-shift housing along the tracks. Not the whole route, of course, but in the bigger stations. As for the land, mostly wheat, a few oats and sugar cane. Every so often I'd see a large chimney with smoke billowing out - which are brick making places. It rained on and off the entire ride to Amritsar. I hoped the rain wouldn't spoil everything.

We arrived to Amritsar and found our driver waiting for us there to whisk us away to the hotel, the Savaasa. Again, more rain... there was a little rain building in the streets - of course I didn't think of it at the time. We checked out our rooms and the spa and decided to get a snack before venturing out. Thankfully we did. As we were eating, a monsoon ensued. It was unbelievable how the rain fell! One of the things that we had planned to do was to go to the India and Pakistan boarder to watch the boarder closing ceremony. Everything I had read said that this was a must see. The big issue here - it's outside.... We decided to make the trek to the Attar/Wagah boarder - hopefully not many would be there due to the rain! Our driver backed up right to the stairs so that we didn't have to step in the water - my guess was about 2 inches of water, just right there. The entire city was flooded! Water was everywhere. Again, on and off rain for the next 20-30 minutes to the boarder. When we arrived, there were people everywhere. Rain didn't scare a one of them away. I counted no less than about 15 tour buses! We wiggled our way to the area and continued to try and jockey our way to the best spot as none of us wanted to miss a thing. Through the double gate, we could see Pakistan. On both sides of the gates, people were dancing and singing and celebrating. Once the ceremony started, more chanting in support of India! The ceremony itself was exciting! A LOT of stomping and staring the other side down. They opened the gates for the guards to do their little boarder closing dance. Despite our efforts (and the lack of my fancy camera with the zoom lens) I wasn't able to capture anything that looked like a thing. They lowered the flags and stomped back to their stations. It was a lot of fun! I'll just add that the people watching was a lot of fun too! During this entire ceremony - the rain had ceased. It stopped right when we needed it to.

We found our driver (how, I'm not sure) and went back to Amritsar. We decided to check out the Golden Temple. Again, the streets were just crazy with all the water! The city was flooded! We finally honked our way through the crowds, dropped our shoes at the bootery and made our way in. We had to walk through a little foot bath and make our way up the stairs. I whipped my pink scarf over my head (as my hair needed to be covered for the most part) and up the stairs I went. Seeing the temple at night was just breathtaking. The temple is surrounded my a large pool of water - Sehks bathe in the water before entering the temple. Let's just say this - I saw more than what I had intended on seeing. We walked barefooted on the marble to go inside. We had to purchase food offerings and wait in line. We waited about an hour to get inside. On the grounds of the temple, you could hear someone singing. It was beautiful. Inside, there was the guy singing and men playing instruments like an accordion, but they weren't hanging over their shoulders. It was jam-packed and the quick tour lasted all of about 10 minutes. It was worth it though. Once outside, the food that we had offered is eventually given back to the people. It's taken with both hands - you can't just offer one hand to receive. It looked like brown sugar and tasted like a sweet concoction of flour, butter and brown sugar. We waked back to where we came in and caught another glimpse. Just gorgeous.

We took a detour to a shoe shop to look at Jutis (I have a pair posted on the side of my blog). By the time we were done.... I bet we had about 150 pairs of Jutis on the floor. He kept bringing us more to try on! So, what's a girl to do?? I selected two pairs (I know, I said no more, but they had paisleys and they're cute! Besides, they won't take up that much room, right?). We went back to the hotel to eat dinner, it was about 10 pm and we were tired. We decided that we'd get massage treatments the next morning as we are staying in a spa/hotel - we'd hate to offend our hosts. The owner helped us with our selections and made our appointments.

My massage was to take place at 8 am and at 8, I was getting ready for my massage. All I new was that it was an oil massage - other than that, I knew nothing. Unfortunately, the gal didn't know much English, but I understood what I needed to do and I wasn't really thrilled about it. I'll leave the details out so not to promote any visuals - however, my thoughts included "just relax, I'll never see this woman again", "how am I going to get this oil out of my hair", I hope I don't slide off this wooden bed" and "how am I going to get off this wooden platform without seeming like I'm walking on ice." The shower was another event. There is most certainly a day's learning curve to understand how to regulate the temperature of the shower. At one point I was cornered in the glass shower with scalding water hitting me... my massage lady came to my rescue only to leave me an ice cold shower. That's ok - I'll figure it out upstairs. I did, kinda... in the end, I enjoyed the massage and was well oiled.

We met for breakfast and decided to see the Golden Temple again, just for a second - I'm glad we did! It was lovely. I'll just say that I'm glad we went inside the night before as the line to get in most certainly would have taken over 2 hours. Just down the street, there was another site called the Jallianwala Bagh <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_Massacre> which is now a park commemorating the site. I was fine with walking however only after a couple of steps, we realized that this wasn't an option as every merchant that saw me was out and trying to persuade me into his store. We took a bike rickshaw just a few blocks to Jallianwala Bagh. After that, back to the train station we went. Now, we weren't taking the same train - it was an "A.C. Car" but a different train. In the end, it was a great experience. We snacked our way through the train stations which was fun, eating all different types of food (let's hope that I'm not sorry about that today). We were only 30 minutes behind schedule - we somehow made up an hour. The train back to Delhi took over 7 hours. I saw how much the rain had damaged the crops - it looked that it some places, farmers lost about quite a bit - maybe 30-40% of the field. I hope that the damage doesn't end up being that much... that could be quite devastating.

I arrived at the Taj around 11 pm or so. I had such a nice weekend and great company.

Pictures from Amritsar: http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=222044816/a=109545564_109545564/t_=109545564