Baisakhi at the Golden Temple in Amritsar

I woke up on the bus to a hand placed right on my ass. I slapped it away. This is how most of my time in the Punjab would be spent. Smacking, pinching, slapping hands off my ass and back. Men passing me on the street would have their hand accidentally brush against my thighs. Standing in a crowd I grabbed someone's hand and pinched it really hard. I started looking around for a face that would wince with pain in the crowd. I wasn't doing this for fun. I wanted to see who's hand had been caressing my thigh and inching its way up my waist. However, Amritsar was an amazing place. The spiritual vibe at the Golden Temple complex is all encompassing.

We got off the bus at 3am and were taken around on a cycle rickshaw to a few hotels. The prices were through the roof for accommodations that included cockroaches as bed companions. Some of the hotels were full. We weren't aware that it was Baisakhi, the biggest Sikh holiday and this being their holiest shrine many pilgrims had already snapped up the hotel accommodations. Finally we decided to wait until it was light before looking around more, so we asked to be taken to the Golden Temple. After all, there is no safer place to wait for dawn then at a religious institution. The road leading to the complex was gated off to traffic and amazingly enough there were hundreds of people trekking towards the temple, even a fat man in a shirt without pants was on his way over there. The white marble complex was lit up by the full moon. Someone told us to go along the side and we followed their directions. People stooped to touch the threshold leading into the square and there were golden streameres tied from one end of the gate stretching a hundred feet ahead to the other end of the gate above our heads. The sounds of the complex left the biggest impressions. Almost instantly the sound of the wind blowing through the streamers was competing with the clanking of a thousand metal dishes being washed by volunteers at the free cafeteria. At 3am in the morning! The cafeteria never closes. Anyone can get a free meal at any time of the day. You have to take off your shoes and cover your head to enter but that's a small price to pay when you're hungry.

One of the guards at the temple saw us with our backpacks and waved to us. We didn't say a word about why were were there and what we needed and the guard led us into a dorm filled with foreign tourists. He got us a mattress and asked us to keep our wallets safe and that was it. I was blown away by the hospitality. There were two guards posted outside the door 24 hours a day to make sure no one comes into the dormitory to hassle you. The place was bare. Beds, with mattresses, ceiling fans, unfinished walls, no windows, lockers and an attached shower. It was one of the best places I've stayed, not for it's luxurious surroundings but for its vibe. Everyone there was grateful for the hospitality and respectful of the religion and customs of the Sikhs. To many this was an introduction to Sikhism. You can stay up to three days at the complex and at the end you pay a donation. No one tells you how much to pay.

In the morning, mom and I went to the Golden Temple. You leave your shoes behind, cover your head and walk through a pool of water to clean your feet before entering the marble square that leads to Amrit Sarovar, literally the "pool of nectar", the holy tank that surrounds the Golden Temple. Pilgrims bath in the pool and then head to the temple. We waited in line on the Guru's bridge for an hour before we entered the gold plated Temple. All the walls, doors and the ceiling are covered in gold, decorated elaborately. Inside the pilgrims walk around the Gurus chanting. When leaving you are asked to hold out both your hands to receive an offering of halwa. I call it halwa because that's what it reminds me of. It's sweet and sticky and oily.

The city itself doesn't have much to offer in terms of charm. There are really only three things to see in Amritsar. One is the Golden Temple.

Two: Jallianwala Bagh. If you have seen the Gandhi movie then you'll remember the scene of two thousand unarmed Indian civilians peacefully sitting in a square protesting massacred by British troupes in 1919. Now a memorial park is build around the still visible bullet holes in the walls and the well that many jumped into to escape the attack.

Three: Attari or more specifically the Indo-Pakistani border crossing at Wagah a half hour outside town. It is quite the spectacle. Thousands of people show up to watch the lowering of the flag and the comical parading of the Indian Army. I've never seen legs swung up so high and people walking more comically. The crowd went crazy chanting and singing and dancing. Wow. The dancing. There were quite a few dancing machines in the crowd that would run up onto the street leading to the gate marking the Indian crossing and dance their little nationalistic hearts out. Then there was the waving of the flag. An old woman ran up and down the road stopping in front of the Pakistani officials waving the flag like she was possessed. Following her was an old man and then a woman in high heels and then a bunch of kids and then the officials put an end to it all. The crowd was more fun then the ceremony itself. On our way out we saw a giant and had some "narwar", shaved ice doused in sweet syrup, shaped into a cone and stuck on a stick. It brought back memories for my mom. We couldn't find our bus back so we hitched a ride with a delegation that had dropped off the blind Indian cricket team before the border closed. They were playing against Pakistan in the next few weeks in Lahore and Peshawar. There we were in a bus surrounded by the visually impaired and blind along with their family members speeding back to Amritsar. At the bus stand we shared a cycle rickshaw with a rather hefty widow and her cute little daughter. Something bad must have happened to that woman in her life because she said "Men are dirty. All men are dirty." in a way that speaks of a painful personal experience.