The Golden Temple by Filipe Martins

Off to the Sikhs Mecca equivalent the infamous “Golden Temple” in Amritsar. Early start for the third day running, we are on a roll like Japanese tourists fully equipped with the finest digital equipment money can buy, at the peak of the technology. We walk to the dreaded station, New Delhi Central Station. Surprisingly less congested and straight onto the platform where the train was waiting to depart. Instantaneous falling asleep from Weli and me left poor Mark Walker on his “Jack Jones”. He kept himself entertained with his 100th game of risk on Weli’s iphone. We arrive to Amritsar a completely different city (should I say large town) to Mumbai and Delhi. Instantly I notice an exponential increase of turbans and some sort of order. I must say in general the people from Amritsar a more smartly dressed and cleaner with a lot less aggressive begging. We have started to get the haggling technique and we would have got the taxi driver down to half the initial price had it not been for Weli who decided to collapse and cave in like a house of cards. Reasons were that he spoke pretty good English and we could converse with our newly appointed driver. Well we went on to find out that there was a secret parking charge of 50 rupees that he had conveniently forgotten to mention. Anyway just another wheeler dealer to add to the fine collection we are amassing on our journeys.
We get dropped off a good 500m from the golden temple, immediately from a distance we see a grand white gate similar to the Taj I guess. We take off our shoes and drop off our bags and we walk towards the spectacle. Separating the outside and the gate is a small puddle of water used to wash worshipers’ feet before entering. Having cut the underside of my feet I jumped over it in the hope of avoiding submerging my foot in the dark coloured water. Unfortunately to no avail I was warned harshly with a guard holding a spear, I did as was told instantly with a big smile on my face. Immediately the golden temple stood out like a white tourist in New Delhi downtown market. It is an amazing building surrounded by walls and a disused Mosque. As the name suggests it was very golden so there were no surprises on that front. The Sikhs were bathing in the glistening turquoise water surrounding the golden temple, immediately I drew similarities with other religions and the role of water. Inside the golden temple what I guessed as being the top people in the religion were sitting with one side filled with women and a band. Two guys on an accordion piano player singing (I think praying). Fists full of cash being thrown towards the officials it looked more like a central bank than a temple for one second. The site it amazing and worth the visit or should I say the 12 hour trains there and back. This part of India is not so well documented in the Lonely Planet guide and it shows. We saw very few if any tourists. Like the Taj Mahal the Golden Temple is magnificent. Off to Goa people!!!!!!!
I would like to say we are all pleased (Weli, Mark and I) with the reaction towards this blog. With all the long train journeys we have time to write and fill you all in on our experiences. Feel free to reply to the posts!!!! For those less articulate people that is a hint.