Golden Temple

Once the ordeal in Delhi was over and I was done visiting the Tiger Reserves, I headed to the northwest corner of India to a city called Amritsar. It is located in the Indian state of Punjab. As far as touristy things go, there are only two things to do in Amritsar. One is to travel to the Indian-Pakistani border to watch a ceremony or to visit the Golden Temple, the most holiest of temples in the Sikh religion.
On my first day in Amritsar, I took a shared taxi for an hour ride out of town to the Pakistani border. There, every night, in an area called Wagah, is a ceremony that takes place where Indian and Pakistani soldiers face off for a high stepping, brisk marching show down. It is a highly choreographed event where, to the blaring of nationalistic music on both sides, soldiers in formal dress uniforms, march at each other and stomp and basically plume out their feathers.
The road from Amritsar runs right over the border into Pakistan. In that area of the border there is nothing but farm land and two parallel running, electrified military barbed wire fences, complete with no man's land in between. There is a heavy military presence at the border.
Where the fences cross the road, they change from metal chain link to elaborately decorated entrance gates, each having a wrought iron design of the respective country's flag. Around these elaborately decorated gates, each country has built its own little stadium, where spectators sit to watch the ceremony. The ceremony takes place right down on the road, right there at the two gates. The Indian stadium is divided into several sections. The closest section, with the best views is for VIPs and dignitaries, the next for foreign visitors, the next for Indian ladies and the last and furthest away, for Indian men. It seems a shame that the people who are probably most impacted by this ceremony, the Indians, sit the furthest away. On the Pakistani side it was hard to tell what or whether things were divided. I could see a few white tourists on the other side, but nowhere near as many as on the Indian side. Also, while there was loud cheering from both sides, the most fun came from watching the Indian Men's section. There was a lot of dancing and singing that eventually poured down into the street.
As the ceremony wears on the soldiers from each side march toward the gate at each other and when they meet, there is alot of bravado high stepping which ends in them shaking hands and saluting. As the sun goes down at the end of the 45 minute ceremony, both sides lower their flags simultaneously as if to show good faith in each other. Right. Tell that to the people in Kashmir, three wars later.
On the road from Amritsar, leading up to the border, there is a stretch of gift stalls and food stands. The place had a carnival type atmosphere to it complete with popcorn. All the while, young boys worked the crowd trying to sell everything from postcards to little plastic Indian flags, to DVDs of the ceremony.
Once back in Amritsar, it was night time already. Tomorrow I would go and see the Golden Temple during the day, but wanted to go there tonight to see something that occurred before the temple closed for the day. It was a ceremony where the original Sikh holy book is moved from the Golden Temple to its nighttime keeping area in another temple about 200 yards away.
I arrived at the Temple at about 9:00pm. It is set inside a complex that is at least the size of a large city block. Inside the outer walls of the complex is a large, square, man made lake that is maybe a few feet deep. In the middle of the lake sits the Golden Temple. There is a long 'bridge" walkway that connects the outer area to the Golden Temple. It is referred to as the Golden Temple because it is covered in gold plating and brass and shines like gold in the sunlight. At night it is all lit up by lights along the water. Though it is a relatively small, three story structure it is quite impressive to see and looks much larger than it is sitting out there all by itself on the water.
To enter the temple grounds you need to remove your shoes and cover your head with a scarf. Everyone entering was using these orange scarves that they either bought from a vendor outside the temple or pulled from the 'already used' bin of scarves. I decided to save a little money and skip the risk of head lice and just use my red bandanna. I caught glimpse of myself in a mirror in the temple grounds and realized that I kinda looked like Axel Rose of "Guns and Roses". Not the young, fit, "Built for Destruction" Axel of the 1980s, but more like the bearded, bloated, heroine using Axel of the new millennium.
The entrance way to the temple grounds has a small, two inch deep, four foot wide pool of running water that you walk through to clean your feet. I walked around the outer area of the lake taking photos (no photos allowed inside). As I approached the walkway to cross to the temple, I stop to take a picture. After I did, I heard someone approach me and say hello. As usual, my guard was up, expecting some to ask me to buy something. When I turned around there were two young men who I could tell were Sikhs. Sikhs wear a particular type of turban and have full beards. These two fellows were probably in their early twenties. They said they wanted to say Hi and practice their English and asked if I wouldn't mind talking. I said I'd love to chat, though my guard was still up. After about 5 minutes of talking to them I finally realized that all they really wanted was to talk. They both studied computers in school and were presently in college. One of the guys worked for a textile manufacturer doing computer work and the other worked for a charity organization doing computer work. The one that worked for the charity organization was just learning English. The other, whose name was Jal, did most of the talking. Jal was very interested in the origins of languages and was currently studying French to go with his very good English. We had a nice long discussion about language and the similarities between different modern languages after they branched off of older languages. He told me a bit about what it was like to live there in Amritsar and told me where to go stand for the book ceremony. After a while he said he had to go and off he and the other fella went. It was really nice talking to them and it reminds me that it's the touts that give everyone a bad name and that there are really nice people here.
I went into the temple and stood upstairs on an inside looking balcony. From the 2nd floor balcony I was on, I could look down and see the Guru Granth Sahib or Sikh holy book. All day long, four priests inside the temple kept up a continuous reading of the holy book in the Gurmukhi language. Finally, at about 10pm, one of the priests wraps up the holy book and carries it on his head out the door of the temple to a waiting golden sedan. The sedan is carried by four large handles, two facing forward, two back, just like the ones you would see kings being carried on, but not as big. This one did have a golden covering on it with a large pointed decoration on top. The priest loaded the holy book onto the sedan and off it went being carried by the faithful. From where I stood it looked very heavy since it took about 16 men to carry.
I filed out of the temple with the rest of the crowd, all of whom were Indians, I didn't see another foreigner there, which surprised me. As I left the temple and stepped out onto the bridge walkway, I could see the top of the sedan about half way down the bridge, heading towards the other temple and its resting place for the night. There was a brass railing that ran the length of the walkway and hence, there were two lines of people heading down the walkway to the temple exit. One of the lines was moving quickly while the other was slugging along. I naturally decided to get in the quicker moving line. The line I was in was moving so much faster than the other line, it made me wonder why. But before I could ponder this issue for long, I realized why. The other line was just people leaving the temple. The line I was in was the line of the faithful, all taking turns rotating in and out in the duty of carrying the sedan with the holy book on it. I panicked for a second when I realized that I couldn't switch lines due to the brass rail. So, I just went with the flow. Before I knew it, it was my turn and I got under one of the arms of the sedan and replaced a guy that was already there. I followed everyone else and put the weight of the arm on my shoulder and lifted. It was heavy, this thing must be solid, I thought to my self. After about a minute of carrying, I was rotated out by someone else. To the back of the line I went again and within a few minutes we were off of the walkway and the sedan was set down. One of the holy men took the book from the sedan and carried it to the other temple for the night. A team of workers then cleaned and disassembled the sedan.
As I stood there watching, still in a bit of shock that I got to carry the sedan, a man came up to me and said to come with him and the rest of the carriers. He said in celebration there was a desert that we were to eat. We walked over to a giant vat of this mushy brown stuff that an older man was serving up. The older man would grab a handful of it and place it in your hand. I took my portion, thinking, Oh, no I'm gonna get the Ghangida from this. But I couldn't refuse, not with all the faithful watching. So I ate my handful. It was like a mushy bread and a bit syrupy sweet.
After that, the man who lead me to the vat said goodbye and off he went. I headed out of the temple complex as well and back to my guesthouse. In the morning I woke and realized that there was no visit from the Ghangida in the night. I should have known that the Holy book Guru Granth Sahib would have watched over me.