Thursday 6th May 2010
9.30pm
Dormitory room, the Golden Temple, Amritsar
India
This dorm room is very over crowded and everyone is very close to each other. There's no space between the beds. It is right next to the Golden Temple complex and the rest of this particular building, the Sri Guru Ram Das Niwas is filled with Sikh pilgrims by the thousand.
Outside and around the temple are thousands upon thousands of pilgrims who have come from lord knows where to this sacred site, a Mecca for Sikhs.
Tonight due to overcrowding, people will sleep on the dorm floor.
My first evening here in Amritsar has been eventful and hectic to say the least. I arrived here in the city at around 5.30pm and looked for the bus from the train station to the temple, the free one as advertised in the LP (Lonely Planet).
After what was a peaceful air-conditioned train trip from Lucknow to Amritsar it was a shock. It was a great scrum to get a seat on the bus that was packed and even against woman and children I had to power my way on to the bus past them, utilising my large backpack. Move it or lose it.
...in the dorm right now are a French couple distracting my attention from writing. The noise of the fan in the ceiling is doing the same...
While waiting for the bus was an equally disturbing experience.
The bus stop by the train station was easy enough to find, after swatting away several taxi drivers like flies one after the other (which is a regular practice for travellers here), I saw a large group of people gathered by a rusty old post near the station entrance. The sun still beating down.
The group included some young lads, aged around 20 or 21 who soon took notice of the lone white traveller. I loitered near the group resting and waiting before some members of the group began to loiter around me. I didn't like their joky attitude or direct overly personal questions which I had to wait for them to spit out in their broken manner. 5 or 6 of them stood around and spoke Hindi among themselves, and asked me where my wife was which seems funny now but which at the time I wasn't in the mood for. All the while several young lads were encircling me, like they were eyeing some prey, and just staring at me like I was an animal for sale at a show, worse still a freak from the circus or alien from Mars. Piercing white eyes and slightly furrowed brows.
The concept of treating foreigners with respect, where that foreigner may be from, is lost on the people of some nations. A local Sadhu, protested to these guys that I was not here for their entertainment. I moved away from the crowd slightly, trying to let it all pass and hoped the bus would turn up soon, which it did.
One of the cocky ringleaders of the gang patted me on the back of the head as people moved towards the bus, at this point my mind was focused on making it onto the bus. It was the kind of things a 5 year-old would do. I don't like that kind of disrespect, the kind where people think it is okay to touch a stranger. Frankly it riled me a little, and my demeanour became a littler stern towards the guy who hit me. I gesticulated towards him as we squeezed onto the bus.
Anyway, water under the bridge now. A second guy on the bus also realised the banal nature of the young lads and helped to a seat and gave me directions getting off.
The journey didn't take long.
It was unpleasant, but an experience. It showed me something.
Taxi? What taxi?
There are many foreigners in the dorm but are all mere needles in the haystack once they go outside.
After dropping my stuff off at the dorm I headed to the Golden Temple as the sun was starting to set. I washed my feet and handed in my shoes and socks and covered my head with an orange bandana which a stranger, an old Indian man, helped me put on correctly.
Then I went inside and saw the temple. A magnificent golden shrine surrounded by a large pool the size of a a couple of football pitches roughly. Everyone walks on the marble surrounding the pool and a walkway leads to the temple in the middle which contains the Adi Granth (the Sikh holy book). It's called the Golden Temple because it is of course covered in Gold and I took some pictures with my 'new' camera.
Here, walking around the pool, I attracted some much more friendly attention. I sat by the pool's edge and a couple asked me to take a picture of them with their young son, so I obliged, with neither party quite understanding the other. Then he wrote down his address and asked me to mail him a copy of the photo, so now I have a small piece of paper with an odd name and address on it to send the photo to.
Next a group of several young girls asked me for a photo and with the help of a passing old man who spoke English I discovered they were from a small village somewhere and wanted their picture with me.
Some of them were really quite nice.
I was beckoned by several other people and fell in and out of conversation with lots of people. After a while my energy waned.
At the temple, which is free to enter just like the dorm, which is free to stay in, is a huge kitchen that serves free food 24/7 to visiting pilgrims and visitors alike. So I went to this huge dining hall with literally thousands of other people at the same time. Everyone picked up a shiny plate and spoon on the way in, and either marched upstairs to the second floor dining hall or used the one on the first floor.
It was amazing.
The place operates with remarkable efficiency. Everyone is served the same. Warm chapatis, dal bhat, some potato, some vegetable slightly spiced and some water.
As you walk in staff/helpers/volunteers hurriedly direct you to a sport on the floor. Everyone sits in long lines on the floor and no sooner have people got relatively comfortable than servers begin working their way quietly along each line within the room dishing out different bits of the meal. Seconds are fine.
Of course donations are appreciated and kind of expected, if not of money then of time. At least it seemed that way.
I didn't help with the washing up but I may well do at breakfast tomorrow, volunteers are welcome whatever you look like or whoever you believe. It was a great experience and a great few hours and now I'm drained, but it all seems like a remarkable splendid place.
...plenty of surrounding attractions to see tomorrow.
The food tasted good. I had similar food on the train this lunchtime. I really really like chapatis now. I want to eat lots of them when I go back to England.
...I'm really not sure about this dorm.
Even if Amritsar seems fun and interesting I don't fancy sharing a shower with 30 people. I may as well walk around dirty and unwashed for a day or two.
Do all the other temple stuff tomorrow then move on. There are other good things in Amritsar that don't require me to be staying in the temple.
I am drinking a Sprite and eating some cheap biscuits as I write. An Anglo-French couple in giggles near me is distracting me on my right, and my eyes are a touch heavy.
I didn't eat much on the train but did drink lots of tea.
The first leg of my journey, Gorakphur to Lucknow was sleeper class - where you meet the real India, come across travelling beggars and tea sellers and many interesting aromas.
I met a nice guy on the journey too, Karpil. He was only 22 and he told me all about his job and his life story. He was a non-pushy decent nice guy.
The second leg of the trip from Lucknow to Amritsar started an hour after arriving in Lucknow (a place famous for an uprising during the British Raj) so I filled my time watching the local monkeys play on the desolate tracks from 2am to 3am. I travelled 3AC, the lowest air-conditioned class, wow! it was really great. Unlike sleeper class you get a pillow, blanket and more staff cleaning up and so on. I actually lay comfortably enough to drift off to sleep for a good few hours.
After waking up in the morning and for the rest of the journey throughout the day I was, surprisingly it felt, not hassled by anyone to speak small talk with as I sat and read books for most of the day.
Well, I think for now at least that covers everything.
Let's see what tomorrow brings...
Next a group of several young girls asked me for a photo and with the help of a passing old man who spoke English I discovered they were from a small village somewhere and wanted their picture with me.
Some of them were really quite nice.
I was beckoned by several other people and fell in and out of conversation with lots of people. After a while my energy waned.
At the temple, which is free to enter just like the dorm, which is free to stay in, is a huge kitchen that serves free food 24/7 to visiting pilgrims and visitors alike. So I went to this huge dining hall with literally thousands of other people at the same time. Everyone picked up a shiny plate and spoon on the way in, and either marched upstairs to the second floor dining hall or used the one on the first floor.
It was amazing.
The place operates with remarkable efficiency. Everyone is served the same. Warm chapatis, dal bhat, some potato, some vegetable slightly spiced and some water.
As you walk in staff/helpers/volunteers hurriedly direct you to a sport on the floor. Everyone sits in long lines on the floor and no sooner have people got relatively comfortable than servers begin working their way quietly along each line within the room dishing out different bits of the meal. Seconds are fine.
Of course donations are appreciated and kind of expected, if not of money then of time. At least it seemed that way.
I didn't help with the washing up but I may well do at breakfast tomorrow, volunteers are welcome whatever you look like or whoever you believe. It was a great experience and a great few hours and now I'm drained, but it all seems like a remarkable splendid place.
...plenty of surrounding attractions to see tomorrow.
The food tasted good. I had similar food on the train this lunchtime. I really really like chapatis now. I want to eat lots of them when I go back to England.
...I'm really not sure about this dorm.
Even if Amritsar seems fun and interesting I don't fancy sharing a shower with 30 people. I may as well walk around dirty and unwashed for a day or two.
Do all the other temple stuff tomorrow then move on. There are other good things in Amritsar that don't require me to be staying in the temple.
I am drinking a Sprite and eating some cheap biscuits as I write. An Anglo-French couple in giggles near me is distracting me on my right, and my eyes are a touch heavy.
I didn't eat much on the train but did drink lots of tea.
The first leg of my journey, Gorakphur to Lucknow was sleeper class - where you meet the real India, come across travelling beggars and tea sellers and many interesting aromas.
I met a nice guy on the journey too, Karpil. He was only 22 and he told me all about his job and his life story. He was a non-pushy decent nice guy.
The second leg of the trip from Lucknow to Amritsar started an hour after arriving in Lucknow (a place famous for an uprising during the British Raj) so I filled my time watching the local monkeys play on the desolate tracks from 2am to 3am. I travelled 3AC, the lowest air-conditioned class, wow! it was really great. Unlike sleeper class you get a pillow, blanket and more staff cleaning up and so on. I actually lay comfortably enough to drift off to sleep for a good few hours.
After waking up in the morning and for the rest of the journey throughout the day I was, surprisingly it felt, not hassled by anyone to speak small talk with as I sat and read books for most of the day.
Well, I think for now at least that covers everything.
Let's see what tomorrow brings...