Three Days in Punjab: Amtritsar & Attari

Punjab was the perfect follow-up to the chaos of Varanasi and probably the highlight of the trip to India. Amritsar is home to the Golden Temple, an especially sacred and beautiful Sikh place of worship. Sikhism is a religion I can get behind: it was created in reaction to the caste system and most temples offer a communal meal to anyone who's hungry. One problem though: carrying a dagger or spear is one of five duties Sikhs observe. No exceptions at the airport: there's a separate security procedure for Sikhs in Delhi and throughout Punjab.
Actually, speaking of airport security ... women get their own line here, which is a big deal in a country where women seldom leave the house. I whizzed through my empty queue and read for an hour and a half while Aaron battled with the men to get to our gate. Every passenger is given a once over with the detector wand, but for women this takes place in the privacy of a curtained cubicle. We should do this more often, no?

But I digress. The Golden Temple took my breath away.
It rivals my first impression of the Acropolis at night for best single view for the trip. To visit the temple we left our shoes in a locker and walked through holy water to clean our feet. We both covered our heads (traditionally non-turbaned men don an orange kerchief do-rag-style - and this is how we both went). The temple is encircled by a pool of holy water, which people bath in and drink.

Inside the temple we saw the evening ceremony and received a halwa (lentil paste and honey - I like it more than Aaron). Most Sikh men wear do not cut their hair and their turbans cover a bun at the top of their head. There are many Sikh's in the Pacific Northwest, so this was a familiar tradition. Less so, were the giant turbans worn by some pilgrims, as well as the spears and other religious paraphanelia.

We ate lunch in the communal kitchen, which reportedly serves more than 20,000 people each day. The kitchen is staffed with volunteers and we saw circles of pilgrims peeling onions, washing dishes, and directing traffic. Thalis are served in a strict assembly line: get your plate, sit on a mat, then a line of servers pour dal, rice pudding, channa masala, water, and chipates onto your tray. Seconds are available and you can grab an orange for dessert on your way out. The whole process took less than ten minutes and was perfectly satisfying and clean.

Besides oggling the Glden Temple, our second objective was to visit India's only open border with Pakistan at Attari.
Though the border gate remains closed most of the time, every afternoon Pakistanis and Indians gather on their respective sides of the border to cheer and watch the gate open and close long enough for the guards on either side to raise a flag, march to face one another, stomp and show one another the bottoms of their feet, and then quickly shake hands. We were in grandstands on the Indian side, where pop music was balsting, men and women were dancing (separately of course), and an MC was leading us in cheers for Hindustan! A similar scene was unfolding on the Pakistani side. Hilarious, bizarre, and totally fun stuff. Can you find ALow in the crowd?

xoxo Jessie

Varanasi

In many respects Varanasi was the climax of our time in India. According to Hindu belief, if you die and are cremated on the Ganges you escape the otherwise eternal cycle of reincarnation. So the city is home to thousands of pilgrims who come to Varanasi for their last days, weeks, or months. When they die their bodies are brought through the winding alleys of the old city to the ghats along the Ganges to be burned on pyres of sandalwood by the dalit (the untouchable caste).
These fires are lit with a flame that's been burning, apparently, for some four thousand years and can been seen burning at various points along the river continuously. Pilgrims come not just to die and move on but also to witness and bless these passings. We saw boat-lads of white turbaned men chaning and praying as they passed the burning ghats each morning.
The ghats themselves are often beautiful. Many are built and maintained by maharajas from all over India. They are teaming with locals doing laundry, pilgrims praying and bathing, water buffalo and stray dogs eating discarded funerary materials, and tourists watching it all.





At sunrise and sunset there are performances and ceremonies, which tourists generally watch from row-boats on the river banks. Young girls sell votives and rose petals which bring good luck to those who float them down river. So there you are, floating on the Ganges, watching priests meet the sun with conch calls and incense, and the water all around you is dotted with roses and flames. Unique in my experience and very cool stuff.
One particularly pleasing sight was the Varanasi-contingent of The Laughing Club:
Other new sights in Varanasi included bicycle rickshaws (fighting for breathing room in some pretty fierce traffic):
This lovely tea shop:
And a typically subtle temple facade:
We also took a day trip to Sarnath, which is home to the deer park where the Buddha delivered his first sermon. It's considered one of the four most holy spots on the planet for Buddhists, and it's home to a seedling from the tree under which the Buddha reached his enlightenment, as well as some crocs and spotted deer.
Gastronomic adventures in Varanasi included Nepalese momos:
And India peanut brittle (made with jaggery and cardamum), with which I quickly became obsessed:
xoxo Jessie

Oops

We thought we were soo slick. Everyone said Agra was a nightmare, and we managed to time everything so that we would arrive in the early morning from Ajmer and leave in the evening for Varanasi. The train schedules only makes such a schedule possible one day a week and we got the last to sleeper berths available. Pretty cool. Except that the one day in question was Friday, when the Taj Mahal is closed to non-Muslims.

In the end we saw the Taj from an acceptable vantage and were glad to be leaving the pollution, prices, and mayhem of Agra when we did.
Posting about Agra is the perfect time to talk about honking. Indians honk their horns (be they attached to bike, moped, car, truck, or bus) incessantly. On one of our first days here I stepped outside a restaurant to see what the cacophony was - I couldn't believe that was just the din of normal traffic. Drivers honk to indicate that they'll be passing you, that they won't be braking for you, and that they see you. So if I'm walking down a road, and a bike is driving toward me on the other side of the road there will be a honk just to recognize our mutual existence. As a tourist it has been an adjustment but not a real problem.
In addition to seeing the Taj, we spent our day in Agra at Itimad-ud-Dualah, or the Baby Taj where we enjoyed some hilarious monkey business.
And at the Red Fort, where Shah Jahan, who built the Taj lived and eventually was imprisoned when his son usurped his throne. The area where he was quartered enjoyed views of the Taj, where his queen was buried. When Shah Jahan died his son buried him beside her, destroying the otherwise perfect symmetry of the site.





So not as perfect as we planned, but enough to last a lifetime nonetheless.

xoxo Jessie

Pushkar (Varanasi-lite)

Pushkar is simultaneously a religious pilgrimage destination for Hindus who believe its lake's water is holy and for the backpacking crowd who come for the spectacle, the yoga, and the bhang. Ghats - temples that step down to the water's edge - line the lake shores. They are as sacred as any other temple and you must remove your shoes to walk along them. The lake serves more than religious purposes though: we saw people bathing, washing clothes, and collecting water right alongside those who were there to worship. Here you can see saris drying on the ghats:

Pushkar is also home to the Brahma temple:















And this insane gold-leaf depiction of a Jain procession:














Other shots were sharing were of these rose-shaped dairy sweets:
And the street-side caterers, who cooked in large iron woks and then sent their hot food on its way in the brass pots via motor bike:
All good stuff, and we were happy to have had time to stay in Ajmer (with the home cooking) and make day trips to Pushkar.

xoxo Jessie

Ajmer, or how all I really need is good food

Within the first 10 minutes of arriving at our haveli-turned-guesthouse in Ajmer a mouse ran from the tv stand to the bed and we killed three mosquitoes. Rather than find alternative accommodations we helped the mouse find the front door and unpacked the bug zapper. Aaron was concerned with confirming that the rodent was in fact a mouse and nothing bigger, while I was more interested in whether he fled to a hole in the wall (infestation) or out the front door (one-time intruder). This is how I know traveling around the world has changed me.

That first day we ate a mediocre lunch at the "top" restaurant in Ajmer and then a fabulous four course dinner prepared by "the ladies of the house not the servants" at the haveli. Among other things they introduced us to halwa - the sugar infused lentil paste traditionally served in siekh and hindu temples - and sweet paneer. In three days in Ajmer and neighboring Pushkar we managed not to eat anything but our hostess's fare ever again. This is how I know that despite everything, traveling hasn't changed me that much.

Ajmer most famous attraction is the dargah - a pilgrimage destination for the chishti order of sufi muslims. It was the location of a terrorist bombing in October 2007. Our visit to the dargah was one of the more intense and memorable ones of the entire trip. First you leave your shoes, bags, valuables including cameras) outside in a cloak room. Good thing, because inside many areas are so crowded it would have been impossible to protect my belongings from thieves. Though we know other tourists visit the dargah we never saw any. I was careful to keep my hair and body completely covered.

The dargah is an air complex with a shrine built over the remains of a sufi saint in the middle. In the surrounding courtyards we watched pilgrims washing themselves, dropping money into fire pits, and praying on large walled platforms. A group of men chanted and played drums and a harmonium for an audience of men and boys who made offerings of money in exchange for blessings from the musicians. Rose petals and incense filled the entire complex with smoke and perfume. The marble floors would have been colder on our bare feet, but for the layers of petals, leaves, and - I'm sorry to say- bird poop. Some of the incense were in crystalline form, which was new to us.


A crush of pilgrims were constantly moving around the saint's tomb inside the central shrine. Many were crying, kissing the ground, the walls, and the priests who hit visitors who failed to donate to their baskets with incence sticks.

Outside the walls of the dargah was a maze of food vendors selling meats, breads, and sweets to visitors and locals alike. Among other wonders we finally got a glimpse of the process involved in making the mysterious spongey/cakey milk products.


Though our evening at the dargah was incredible, it was hardly the only memorable sight in Ajmer (which, incidentally was way underbilled by the LP). The white marble memorials around the Ana Sagar resevoir were a welcome respite from the dust and bustle of the city. And the hilltop ruins of the Adhau din ka jhonpra mosque, where muslim families picnic and young boys now play cricket, were interesting to see as well.


Last, but hardly least, was the Jain temple complex just outside of town. The site is still under construction and not even in the guide book, but I'm certain it will be by the next edition. The Jains are a tiny minority of the India population, but you wouldn't know it from the number, size, and construction of their houses of worship.




xoxo Jessie