I Woke Up In A Temple (Literally, Not Spiritually)

I arrived to chaos. It's Sunday, which means everyone is off today, which means that the Golden Temple is going to be packed, my driver warned. He wasn't kidding.

Amritsar is home to the Harmandir Sahib, commonly referred to as the Golden Temple, a Sikh Gurdwara (a Sikh temple). As per usual, I had done zero research before coming, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The one tidbit that I had gleaned from another traveler is that you are able to stay at the Golden Temple, which I thought would be a pretty amazing experience so I didn't book a hostel.

When I got out of the cab, it was so frenetic I didn't even know which way to go. I couldn't even tell where the entrance was (as it turns out, there are four of them so people were walking in all directions to get inside). I found a stand where people could deposit their shoes because you aren't allowed to take them inside. I took mine off and put them in my bag and walked about 10 minutes barefoot on cement, pavement, and some worn-out rugs that has been put out through the streets surrounding the temple. I finally found an entrance and was promptly stopped and scolded in Hindi. But why?! I've already removed my shoes! Through various gestures I discovered that 1) I needed to cover my head and 2) I couldn't bring my bag inside. I asked the guy where I could stay for the night and he sent a boy to take me to the place, about a 3-minute walk away just outside the entrance of the temple.

I finally found the Fountain of Youth!
Err... I mean the Golden Temple.

I put my stuff down inside and came back out to the temple, with my Muslim prayer cap on, which I soon realized made me stick out like a sore thumb because all of the men were either wearing traditional Sikh head-wear, or people who had neglected to bring their own head coverings has been given these orange bandannas.

Before you enter the temple, there's a small man-made stream you have to step through to wash your feet. Once you get inside, all of the floors are stone and marble. There's an outer courtyard surrounding a square lake. In the middle of the lake is the Golden Temple. Which definitely lives up to its name. It's a beautiful, golden, square structure with a dome in the middle. I didn't really know what Sikh gurdwaras looked like before this trip, but I've seen a lot of them now and they all share a common look with a central dome, surrounded by four smaller domes, each with even smaller domes surrounding those, in a fractal-esque way.
The first thing I noticed inside were that there were almost-naked men bathing in the pool. I take it from the signs around the place that this is called the Holy Dip and I assume is a religious act. At each corner of the courtyard are water stations. There's also a huge free kitchen called a Guru Ka Langar serving food (more on that part later).

He's holding his own head!

There are also a few stations relaying a few significant events in Sikh history. I got to one of these stations and saw a huge painting of a man holding his own cut-off head. Whoa. This man was Baba Deep Singh and as legend goes, he was fighting in a battle, got decapitated, then miraculously continued to fight and chased off his enemies (for a colloquial if not slightly vulgar retelling of this story, you can find one here).

I walked around half-way and then found a bunch of people waiting in line for something, I wasn't sure what. Much like at Kaligad in Calcutta, I figured if a bunch of people were waiting in line for something, I probably should too. Something I've learned in India is that there's literally no concept of personal space here. People were packed in line like sardines and there's a constant force on your back pushing you forward even though there's no place to go. It was incredibly hot but they had fans blowing mist on the crowd which was an incredibly welcome aspect of the experience.

Waiting in line to get inside the Golden Temple

I waited for about an hour and a half in the line and it eventually led me inside the Golden Temple. There's a footbridge connecting the outer walkway to the Golden Temple in the middle of the lake. There are fish in the lake. Cool. About 5 feet behind me, a dude threw up on the bridge. Gross. I wondered why he didn't do it in the lake but then I figured it was probably because that's supposed to be holy water so that may or may not have been an even bigger faux paus than throwing up on the bridge where a zillion people need to walk across to get inside the temple.

Bridge leading to the Golden Temple

Throughout the courtyard there's a constant sound of music and people chanting in a language I can't understand, which I assume is some sort of prayer. As we entered the temple, everyone bent down and touched the step in front of them. After the steps, I found out where that chanting was coming from. There were a handful of people playing instruments and reciting into microphones. Another couple people were being given gifts of money, food, and some sort of large cloths neatly folded. Occasionally if the gift was big enough (I assume that's the reason), the person would receive something back from the man. I along with everyone else only had a few seconds to take in this scene before being ushered out. However, once outside, you could go upstairs and look down on the whole scene for as long as you wanted. Inside of the Golden Temple it was beautifully decorated with gold and other colors, as well as some painted designs.

After spending a few minutes upstairs, I went to head out but discovered that you could actually go up to the roof too! It was a cool scene up there, though you could see much of the surroundings because the walls were too high to see over.

Not what it looks like from
this photo

As I was walking out of the temple, I saw people bending over to drink some of the water from the lake. This time around I had the good conscience to not drink the water. At the end of the walkway back to the outer path however, they handed everyone a small scoop of some sweet (and incredibly oily) food that I think is called persaud. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to eat it so I held it in my had for about 15 seconds before I saw someone else eating it and figured it was okay to do without offending the thousands of people inside the temple.

One day I dream of holding
my own concert in a gurdwara

Outside of the temple, there were these dude singing (shouting) really loudly and off-key but it was awesome to see and they had a big audience, plus there were some cool instruments.

I walked around the temple a little more then headed out to go to my next destination: the Attari border. Attari is a village in the Amritsar district and the location of a border with Pakistan. Every night there's a big ceremony where they close the gates at the border and I heard it was a sight worth seeing.

Hard to capture, but this was taken from my
seat. In the trunk.

This trip has been filled with a lot of really poor decisions but my choice of transportation to the Attari border was definitely one of the poorest. There are autos you can take for 900 rupees. Or, as a totally sketchy dude told me, I could take his shared van there and pay only 200 rupees. Seemed like a great deal to me, so I told him yes. He was leaving in 30 minutes so I killed some time and then found him again. He told me to follow him, so I did and he led me through a bunch of really sketchy back alleys and then just told me to wait. I asked him where his other passengers were and he gestured behind us at the handful of people also walking in the street who may or may not have just been random strangers who happened to be in the street. After a minute, a van pulls up (luckily those other people actually were passengers). He opens up the back of the van and there are some jerry-rigged seats where he squeezed in 5 people (there was maybe space for 2), myself included. No seat belts. Which is fine, this is India and seat belts aren't really a thing here. But the kicker, my friends, is that the back door to this van, the very same door I was sitting right next to... didn't close. It would stay down, but the latch was broken. Which means that the entire 45-minute ride, I was holding on for dear life and hoping that the driver didn't feel the need to suddenly accelerate and send me flying out the back.

Safe and sound at the Attari border

We arrived at the border in one piece, thankfully. It's about a 10-minute walk from where the buses drop you off and where you enter the border crossing area. The place was already packed with people, but luckily there's a special entrance for foreigners and VIPs. So being the VIP that I am, I got to skip the big line and went to a section with a much better view than most others had.
The venue is basically a stadium surrounding a street, The street leads to the border gate. As far as I could tell, the same setup exists on the Pakistan side.
I arrived in the stadium to a huge, nationalistic party! Everyone was so happy and cheering for India and there was this electric feeling in the air. There was loud Hindi music blaring, and then  the ladies section was invited into the street for a dance party. This went on for about 20 or 30 minutes before the actual ceremony began.

Ain't no party like and Indian border partayyyy!

To say that this ceremony was ridiculous in a total understatement. This is the most absurd official state ceremony I've ever seen in my life. I wish I had produced this video which, although satrical in nature, pretty accurately captures what happened during the 20-minute ceremony. There were lots of funny hats, high kicks, and proud Indians cheering for the country. All the while, you could hear the echo of the same happening on the Pakistani side, who had equally funny hats and high kicks. I kid you not, at one point the guards from both sides approach the gate and actually flex in front of each other.

The winner of Mr. India
is awarded a white track
suit and made to MC
this ceremony until his
death or the dissolution
of the border. It's India's
highest honor.

The ceremony is MC'd by this dude wearing a white track suit. Need I say more?

Are you staring at my plume?

When the ceremony was done, I I climbed back inside the van of death for my ride home. We were 
dropped off on the roof of a parking lot, which seemed fitting.

When I got back to Amritsar around 8:30pm I headed back to the Golden Temple to grab a meal there. What I experienced next was one of the most awe-inspiringly efficiently meal services I've ever seen. As I walked in, I was handed one-by-one a tin plate, a cup, and some silverware, and ushered into a giant hall. Everyone was seated in very neat rows. I sat cross-legged and there were people walking up and down the aisles, each with a different food item. If you wanted roti, you held out your hands and the would drop one in. If you wanted anything else, you held up your plate and then would ladle it into one of the plate's compartments. The food was again simple, but wonderful. It even included dessert. You could have as much food as you want, but you're supposed to eat everything you take. As people finish, they get up and leave, and as a whole section is cleared, some volunteers come by and mop up the section. They start seating people from one end of the room and work their way to the back of the room. Once they've filled the back, they start over at the front, which is now already empty of people, cleaned, and ready for the next batch of hungry folks. As I was taking my dishes out, one of the volunteers asked me how it was and then told me that the kitchen never closes - they do this 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Whaaaaaat?!

YUM

After exiting, I sorted my dishes into various bins and then watched in awe the procession of people who cleaned them and got the ready to be used again. For the plates, first they were banged into a bin to get the extra food off, then tossed over to a giant pot of water to be cleaned, then neatly stacked at the end.

Golden Temple at night

With a full belly, I walked around the temple a little more. The air was pleasantly warm and I decided to lie down next to the water. The stone floor was hard but I didn't mind. I was looking up at the night sky, with the temple structures scattered throughout my periphery, music and chanting happening in the background, and it was so... peaceful. I ended up falling asleep for a couple hours. I woke up to an alarm I had set for myself to go get into my auto and get to the airport. I was so disoriented when I woke up, I was literally stumbling out of the temple. On my way out, I passed by hundreds of other people spending the night at the temple. Stone floor is more comfortable than I thought, I guess. I made back, gathered up my things, gave some donations to the temple hostel as well as the temple kitchen, found an auto, and made my way to the airport, headed to Goa.

No blanket. No pillow. No problem.