December 2003 -- We took Monday off to make a three-day weekend in Amritsar with our friend Mark. It might be his last year in India, and it's one place he's never been. Maybe the only place he's never been -- he certainly gets around!

Amritsar is a fabulous place. It's the seat of the Sikh religion, where their main holy place, the Golden Temple, is located. It's also a nice town in its own right. Small by Indian standards (only a million people.) But they seem to have the sewer and electrical lines under control, unlike some places like Jaipur.  I went back to Amritsar with Doug and Sam on a degree confluence hunt in April of 2007. I took a bunch of photos, which maybe I'll post on here later. But the best part was that I shot some video of the musicians at the Golden Temple. Fantastic bearded dudes playing awesome holy music. Here are two video clips:

Sikh Musicians 1 Sikh Musicians 2

Not that it's a modern, clean place -- it's very medieval, but that's what I like about it. In just a few hours of walking around, we saw a cobbler, a horse-shoer shoeing a horse, a guy ironing in the street with a coal-burning iron, a street scribe taking dictation on a manual typewriter, a blacksmith making swords, a coppersmith banging out brass milk jugs on an anvil. . . I can't remember what other old-timey professions we saw. But it was like Colonial village or something. And the people were even more friendly than in Delhi. They all wanted their photos taken (lucky that I just picked up that new memory card in Malaysia, because I filled up both cards! I bet I took 700 photos.)

Mark has no fear. When he wants to go somewhere, he gets in. And people are so friendly, they always let him in and give him a tour. If you're in a holy temple, and you are on the ground floor with a thousand other people, you wouldn't just look up and say "hey, I think we ought to climb on the roof to get a better view." Especially if there was no one up there already. But that's Mark. Always looking for a better spot to take photos from, and a good high vantage point for the view. So we are scrambling through alleys behind the temple looking for walls to climb. We found a kitchen behind the temple, and a climbable wall, and just as we're heading towards the roof, this guy comes out to yell at us. Mark always ignores the first few yells, but this guy was persistent. I turned around to see him, and he says "please take off your shoes." Just wanted us to show respect to the roof we were climbing on. Then he climbs up on the roof with us, and we're chatting with this guy while we look down at the crowds in the temple. Amazing.   Lots of great old buildings in Amritsar. It's got the centuries-old temples and gurudwaras, but it also has 1940's Art Deco apartments, and 1800's British Raj-Style government buildings. All a bit run down, but you can imagine what it would have been like. Again with the "no fear Mark" thing -- when Mark sees a doorway he likes, or a building that looks cool, he just goes right on it. And I wouldn't think to do that, because even if it isn't someone's house, there is almost always someone living in it. Usually a large family. We bopped into one cool doorway, went inside to the courtyard, and started taking photos. The people who lived there came out and instead of yelling at us, they all want us to come in and take a tour. Turns out one of the sections of it is a 200-year-old Hindu Aksara, which is like some type of cross between a temple and a school. The electricity was out, but you could make out some pretty nice old frescoes on the wall. With the flash on, I got some good photos. Tricia was afraid of stepping on rats. It was quite dark. So then Mark talks his way up to the roof. It's wild, when you are walking on the windy narrow alleys, you hardly think about the rooftops, but in Indian villages, it's like Mary Poppins -- there's this whole other world on the roof. You can climb from building to building, there are people living up there, cooking, drying laundry, flying kites, kids playing. Not to mention the great views.

The milkmen wouldn't sell us their brass milk jugs, so we had to buy new ones without any of the beat-up character that we were seeing on the street.		We picked up a few at the local brass shop.

Amritsar is right on the border of India and Pakistan, sort of the Indian version of Lahore. We took a taxi to the border to see the "beating of the retreat" which is the ceremonial afternoon closing of the border. Even though there's tension between the countries, they allow some travel across the border. At 4pm, when the take down the flags and lock the gates, they put on this huge show. It's like a high-school football game, if the rivalling teams were nuclear superpowers. Thousands of people on both sides show up to watch, and there are big concrete stadium seats set up for both sides. The crowds fill up an hour in advance, waving their flags, and chanting at each other. "India is great!" "No, Pakistan is great!" "No, India is great!" It's fun to watch, and the guards keep it from getting out of hand. At one point, one Indian was leading a chant of "Pakistan something-something-something." (Probably "death to Pakistan" or "Pakistan isn't nearly so great as they think they are.") And the Indian border guards rushed up to tell him to stop. Got to stay lighthearted and positive.  Then the guards started their show, goose-stepping around and doing this cheerleader-style high kicks. In their tough army green uniforms with red turbans and big Roman Centurion-looking headbrushes. One at a time, they do a waist-high goosestep double-time to the border, shake hands with their partner on the other side, salute, and then do a series of acrobatic kicks for the crowd. Trying to outdo the other one. Peace through superior gymnastics. Then when each of them had done their thing, they start lowering the flags. Careful to go at the exact same speed, so that one country doesn't accidentally lower their flag first and start a war. And as they're lowering, the excess string builds up. Instead of wrapping it up around the flagpole or something, they gather it carefully, and then 4 or 5 times, they throw it up in the air like a cross between fly fishing and Olympic ribbon tossing. Hysterical. The crowd just claps and shouts and chants the whole time.  Then the border guards wrap up the flag, march around, lock the gates, and declare the border closed. And everyone goes home.

Ever wonder where colored string comes from?  These guys had unrolled a bunch of white string, and were painting it by hand with wadded-up rags.  Then as it dried, they rolled it up into colored balls of string.  Wacky.

The hotel we stayed in had it's own fleet of water buffaloes.  So the cream in your coffee was pretty darn fresh.  It would be kind of gross, if they weren't so cute.

Jallianwala Bagh is the memorial which commemorates the 1919 massacre.  If you saw the movie Gandhi, it's the scene where the British open fire on the group of Punjabis gathered in the courtyard.  You can still see some bullet holes in the walls.
		Sikhs prepare food every day for the hungry.  Anyone who wants to is welcome to eat at their Gurudwara, regardless of their religion.  All the food is donated by Sikhs, and volunteers work in the kitchen and serve the food.
Lunch time!   I'll have cock rolls and a bucket of ice.	These kids were playing badminton with a clipboard.  So cute!  I wanted to get a photo of them playing, but they all stopped and posed when I took out the camera.	Black drongos at the Golden Temple

Fun time. A perfect three-day weekend. We took a 5-hour train on Saturday morning, arrived in time for a late lunch, and left Monday early afternoon, still got into bed by midnight, to get up for school Tuesday morning.