Amritsar

Amritsar is located in northern India and is home to the Golden Temple, the most holy site of the Sikh religion.  We traveled by train with our friend, Devika, on a quick and relatively unplanned weekend trip.  After finding cheap accommodation near the Golden Temple, we headed off to the Wagah Border Ceremony.  Wagah is a border crossing near Pakistan approximately 30 kilometers from Amritsar, where an unexpected tradition has latched on.  Unexpected especially considering tense relations between the two countries and the mass of serious military deployments on both sides of the border.  Every evening before sunset, soldiers from the two countries march toward each other, kicking their legs high in the air in order to show bottom of their feet, a sign of disrespect.  Masses of Indian nationals (and occasional foreigners) gather to watch.  A lesser crowd shows up on the Pakistani side.  I’ve never been in such a huge, densely packed crowd, and I found the level of nationalistic fervor a bit unnerving.  Security was present to get near the border, but there was such a sea of people that they just poured across the barriers.  See this link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeSX6AZ5xEI) which was taped from the Pakistani side.  It was much more crowded when we were there.  We were actually sitting on the road where they march with hundreds of other people.  Sardines.  Exteme breastfeeding, anyone?

We ate some delicious food while in Amritsar, which is also known for being a spice processing hub.  I think our favorite was sarson ka saag, cooked mustard greens.  Delicious.  Devika explained the Hindi--sarso is mustard, and ka saag refers to the way it is cooked.  I said in a very Minnesotan way, "So, you could say palak (spinach) ka saag too?"  My cinematic mind instantly created a scene in which two foot armies are charging toward each other, Braveheart-style, one yelling "SARSON KA SAAG!" and the other screaming "PALAK KA SAAG!" just as passionately.  It was the joke for the rest of our time in Gurgaon; it stuck that well.

We headed to the Golden Temple early in the morning.  Stunning.  It was built in the early 1500s, and really is covered with pure gold.  It was torture for the feet since we had to remove our shoes to enter the premises, which is entirely covered by freezing cold marble.  Already at 7:00 in the morning, the line to enter the temple was massive and as densely packed as Wagah, so I opted out knowing that Oliver would need to be fed and changed in the hours that I would have been standing in line.  On my way out though, I realized that I had left the ticket for retrieving my shoes with Sarah and Devika.  The compassionate shoe room men let me in and I searched for nearly a half hour before realizing that I could call Devika and ask what my tag number was.  The problem was that the local language is Punjabi, which uses different numerals, so Devika had to try to describe what the numbers looked like before asking someone standing nearby what the numbers were and then talking on the phone to one of the shoe room men.  After a 45-minute ordeal, I recovered my beloved $2.50 sandals.

While waiting in line, Sarah and Devika were approached by two village girls who were very eager to meet a foreigner (Sarah), who they said looked like Cinderella.  We later joked if they meant before or after the fairy godmother, since Sarah isn't exactly known for being a hygiene queen.  Devika acted as the interpreter as they asked question after question, and Sarah wanted to make the point that she works on the land too (she’s pretty much self-sufficient in food at home in SD, only buys flour to make bread and I think butter, milks her goats and makes cheese).  Since the crowd was so dense, everybody was keenly listening to their conversation, and when Devika said in Hindi that Sarah had goats, too, bewildered whispers of “goats goats goats goats goats goats” reverberated through the crowd.

Meanwhile Oliver was busy making friends with turbaned locals.  I found the men in Amritsar to be far less creepy than in Gurgaon and Delhi; I would even say that they weren’t creepy but genuinely friendly (except young men, of course, who seem to be creepy everywhere in India).  According to me, Sikhs seem to have a reputation for being trustworthy, honorable, fierce in battle but with a soft side.  I definitely found this to be the case (the soft side part, I didn’t get into any fights!) as people admired Oliver and passed him around.

OLIVER GOT HIS FIRST TOOTH on the way to Amritsar!  We knew they were slowly coming in and Devika was the first to spot it.  Exciting, but as the second one (he now has the bottom two) came in he cried inconsolably for three hours on the train ride back.

Devika with Oliver, pre-3 hour crying spree