Amritsar - 3/21/1999

A fax sent from our hotel in Amritsar, India on March 21, 1999:

E-mail has proven difficult to find here in Amritsar, so here's an update via fax ...

Our last day in Agra (Thursday), we had a very traditional Indian breakfast at the jewelry shop where we met the Sikh man who had said his brother is Inspector General in Amritsar. The food was delicious, but then - in the last half hour before we left for the train to Amritsar - things got very weird. First, we got the news that the "brother" had been called away on official business and wouldn't be able to see us after all. Then they (the owner and his friends) offered to give us some very expensive gold jewelry if we would carry some jewelry back to Chicago for them "to save the taxes, since tourists don't pay export taxes." Conincidentally, they were going to be in Chicago next month. Another coincidence: Ram Singh, the owner, was going to be in Delhi in two weeks, just before we leave the country. And so on. It was such a transparent scam, with so many inconsistencies in their story, that I felt like the straight man in a Three Stooges movie... "Larry, Curly and Moe don turbans and con tourists, while the audience dies laughing." Of course, I had to save the laughter for after our touching goodbyes at the train station, with many hugs and repeated assurances that we would be in touch as soon as we get to Delhi. Ha!

The train ride between Agra and Delhi on the Kerala Express was our first train ride during the day, and there were many sights to be seen: water buffalos bathing in stagnant ponds, women harvesting wheat by hand with giant scythes, camels tied to trees in the shade, families sleeping in ditches, marching soldiers waiting at train crossings, numerous small villages on a landscape that looks a lot like Iowa, and then the huge slums on the outskirts of Delhi, with people living in rows of small tents made from cardboard and plastic bags, while children played in piles of garbage lining the train tracks. Then we arrived at New Delhi train station, where our 4-hour layover before the train to Amritsar was our most unpleasant experience so far on this trip.

First, as soon as the train stopped, two young coolees converged on our luggage and began fighting over it, with much yelling (in Hindi) and pushing. I was yelling "one coolee, NO TWO COOLEE", and we stumbled off the train with the three of us tugging on two bags while Mom brought up the rear with our camera bags. Then they kept wanting to take us to a taxi, and I said no, we're catching a train. I thought they understood, but after following them across several platforms I suddenly realized we were headed out the exit into a feeding frenzy of cab drivers, so I had to physically restrain them, and we yelled back and forth for a while before heading in a new direction. I told them we wanted to go to the ITB (International Tourist Bureau office), thinking this would be a safe haven. Then a calm older man appeared, and said in impeccable English "for ITB, please follow me." We did, until I saw that he was leading us out yet another exit, at which point I screamed "BULL...." and slapped my hands together so hard right in front of his face that several guys nearby seemed to think I had hit him. If looks could kill, we would have been put out of our misery right there, but no such luck. Eventually, after a few more wrong turns, I found the ITB on my own, paid off the coolees, and yelled "Please go away from us" until the group of bottom feeders we had picked up all wandered away in search of new prey.

After a brief rest to calm down and get our bearings, we decided to find the correct platform on our own, since the people at ITB were no help either. For some reason, the schedules posted in ITB don't show the platform numbers, so I walked through the station to the "real" posted schedules, saw that we needed platform 9, figured out where that was, then returned for Mom and the luggage. I carried our two big bags and Mom carried the camera bags, and away we went. When "touts" (as they call them here) tried to help us, I would wait until we were near one of the armed guards and then start yelling "get away from us," and that seemed to work OK. We got to platform 9 and spent the next 4 hours sitting on our luggage, ignoring the occasional crippled beggar who happened by. We'll be back at New Delhi station one more time, on the 26th - can't wait.

After the overnight train from Delhi, we arrived in Amritsar, the city of the Sikhs, at 6:00 am Friday. We decided to take a break to improve our attitude, and checked in to the nicest hotel in Amritsar, the Mohan International. Later that morning, we took the first of several trips to the Golden Temple. This is the holiest temple in the Sikh religion, a spectacular Mughal-style temple covered with real gold and surrounded by a pool full of carp and goldfish, which is further surrounded by a wide marble walkway where thousands of Sikhs quietly circumambulate the site. As you enter through a marble archway, regal Sikh guards make sure everyone follows the rules: remove your shoes, wash your feet, and cover your head.

The tranquility of the Golden Temple was a great break from the in-your-face hassles of the Hindu temples we've visited in other Indian cities: no beggars, nobody trying to sell us anything, and no sounds except for the constant reading and singing of Sikh scriptures by holy men in the inner sanctum. And no tourists -- people would stare openly at us, and some people would walk right up and take our picture, giggling and pointing.

I decided it was my DAA baseball cap that made us stand out, so Saturday I bought a nice maroon turban. We attracted a crowd while the men in the turban shop tied it on my head, and then back at the Golden Temple we attracted even more stares than before, and at one point a group of young men walked up to me and one shook my hand and said, "My friends want to tell you that you are looking very smart" and then they all laughed.

It turns out that we came to the Golden Temple at the best possible time in many years - a 4-year project to repair and polish every square inch was just completed this month, and Saturday there was a celebration of this event. Various Sikhs told us that it's never looked better than right now, and if we had come a few weeks earlier it would have been surrounded by scaffolding. Good timing.

We also went to Jalianwala Bagh, where the British opened fire on peaceful protestors in 1919 (as depicted in the movie "Gandhi"), and saw the bullet holes in the walls and the memorials. And we went to a Hindu temple that is based on the cave of Armanth at 13,000 feet in the Himalayas, where thousands of Hindus make a pilgrimage each August. We had to crawl through little openings and wade through water in the dark, going single-file through a huge plastic replica of the Armanth cave, and it looked like the only non-Hindus there were us two and our Sikh driver.

Our driver, Ajit Singh, knows less English than any driver we've had on this trip, but we've never felt safer. He's a retired army man with a grey flecked beard and the body of a young athlete, and everyone seems to know him - old men smile and nod, and young men politely step aside when he leads us through the crowds. Friday night we went to see the daily border-closing ceremony at the Pakistan border 25 miles west of here, and many of the army officers saluted or shook Ajit's hand when he walked past. And that was quite an experience, the border closing ... the Indian and Pakistani border guards yell back and forth, then do some high-stepping stuff like John Cleese used to do on Monty Python, and the crowds on both sides of the border cheer and scream like it's a sporting event. And, once again, no tourists around except the two of us.

- ### -