A Rude Awakening in the Holy Land of the Sikhs

Amritsar is to Sikhs what the Vatican is to Catholics and Mecca is to Muslims; simply the holiest place on the planet. The centrepiece of the entire Sikh religion is the grandiose Harmandir Sahib, a temple extravagantly wrapped in 500kg of gold foil, earning it the nickname of Golden Temple.

Before beginning this story, I should explain that my recent inactivity has been a result of the brutal workload of my English teaching course. I have now completed the course – with distinction, obviously – and will be looking to find employment with a prestigious language school in Mexico for at least the next 6 months. I will return to posting regularly on Steemit from now on.

I'm skipping ahead a few weeks from my hospital escapade in Udaipur, mainly because I'm really itching to start sharing my stories about the “dangerous” terrorist countries to the west of India.

I came to India with four bucket list items I wanted to fulfil. Get into a Bollywood film (check), experience the underground electronic music scene (check), see a Bengal Tiger, my favourite animal, in the wild (sadly, getting sick ruined that one for me). The final one was to spend a night experiencing Sikh hospitality at the Golden Temple, a place where any man, woman or child may eat, sleep, and worship, totally free of charge, regardless of race or religion.

I had just spent 8 days in Delhi, waiting for my Iranian visa to be approved. Delhi is, um, okay, I suppose. The city centre is an absolute nightmare; you can't be seen in public with white skin unless you want to be stalked and harassed by all manner of shady characters trying to rinse you of your minimal travel budget. Two days in the backpacking ghetto of Pahar Ganj had me at my wits' end, too anxious to even step outside.

Eventually I shifted to Hemkunt Colony in the suburbs, which was a lot better. I stayed in a pretty cool hostel and met some interesting travellers from India and abroad, we partied a little, and I reconnected with a friend from England who had recently moved to Delhi. I didn't bother making the short trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and I don't regret it. By the time I had my Iranian visa glued into my passport, I was very much ready to get out of there.

Anyway, I digress.

From Delhi, it's about 12 hours on the train to Amritsar, which would be my last stop in India before crossing the border to Pakistan. I was pumped for what the next few days would bring; a night staying in the Golden Temple, eating in the world's largest cafeteria, the famous Wagah border ceremony, and my first foray into a country that conventional wisdom tells us to avoid at all costs.

Being stingy, I walked from the train station to the Golden Temple, a solid hour in searing summer heat. I lost a lot of weight in India by doing stuff like this. Like all Sikh Gurdwaras, one must remove their shoes and wash their feet before entering the complex. I had already experienced this in Paonta Sahib, a small Sikh town 6 hours north of Delhi, where I spent a week with an old friend who had lived in Australia for a decade and recently returned home. That was yet another terrifying bus ride, but no crash this time.

The Golden Temple absolutely heaves with worshippers and tourists alike. The tourists are easy to spot because they aren't wearing turbans. It is forbidden to enter a Sikh Gurdwara without having your hair covered, so tourists (who are mostly Indians of other religions) are given a bandanna to wear.

The perimeter of the complex is a brilliant white marble building, featuring libraries, sleeping quarters, and a museum filled with painted portraits of important Sikh figures, and a lot of swords and severed heads. The Sikhs are as proud of their military history as they are of their hospitality. The complex was full of people sitting or lying down, many simply relaxing, some praying, some reading the Guru Granth Sahib, and even a few reading the Q'uran. You see, the Sikhs believe that as long as you worship God, it doesn't matter which religion you follow; there is more than one path to enlightenment. In fact, Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru of Sikhism, requested Sai Mian Mir – a Muslim Pir of Lahore – to lay the foundation stone of the Harmandir Sahib in 1589.

The centrepiece of the complex is the dazzling golden sanctum, surrounded by a holy pool where worshippers would take a brief dip. Leading into the sanctum is a runway absolutely sardine-packed with worshippers waiting to get inside.

Eventually, after a few laps of the complex and a few photos, I decided to join the queue. After a solid 45 minute wait, I finally had my chance to see inside the sanctum. I could barely move for all the people, so I headed upstairs, where worshippers sat on a mezzanine, reading from the Guru Granth Sahib in front of an ornate chandelier, overlooking the frenetic action downstairs, where hymns were being sung. Photos are forbidden in the sanctum, so I tried to get a few sneaky ones, but they didn't turn out so well.

My next port of call was to get myself a bed for the night. With 100,000 people visiting the Golden Temple every day, the accommodation complex is truly huge, with options for solo pilgrims, families, as well as a separate section for foreigners. Apparently this segregation was created due to misbehaviour from non-Sikh visitors in years past, something that I would have the pleasure of experiencing first hand the following morning.

The quarters were incredibly basic, windowless concrete rooms filled with rows of single beds, guarded by a Sikh volunteer who took a photocopy of my passport just like any other accommodation house in India. The occupants were a laundry list of backpacking stereotypes; the shy Japanese girl with the big backpack, the well-tanned European adventurers with long hair and hiking boots and baggy pants with elephant prints, no doubt bought from a market in Thailand, and, in my room, a creepy Nordic-looking bloke with platinum blonde hair, cut high and tight, wearing jeans and a polo and never once looking up from his MacBook.

Amritsar is an important city in India's history for two reasons. Firstly, for being the birthplace and capital of Sikhism. Secondly, for being the site of a massacre in 1919, with the British Army having imposed martial law on the city, and firing upon a crowd of Sikh pilgrims, killing as many as 1000. This tragedy is often credited with beginning the chain of events that eventually led to Indian independence from the British Raj, as well as the tragic partition of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Partition Museum was closed for renovations while I was in Amritsar, however, an eternal flame now burns at the site from which the British soldiers fired upon the innocent Indians.

Back in the Golden Temple, I was getting hungry, so I decided to try out the Sikh cuisine. I was ushered into an enormous hall with maybe 2000 people sitting on the floor. Watching the whole process was mind-boggling. This is a kitchen that feeds 100,000 people every single day of the year, free of charge. I was given a partitioned stainless steel plate and a spoon, both still wet from being freshly washed. I sat in the corner, desperately trying to cross my legs comfortably (I have a troublesome spine so sitting on the floor is incredibly painful for me), while a procession of staff would walk through the room with huge pots and ladles, each one bearing a different cuisine; dahl, curries, soups, or bread. Within about 10 minutes, we had eaten our fill - not delicious, but satisfying nonetheless - and were ushered out of the room, dumping our plates and spoons into a bucket to be washed on the way out.

With dusk approaching, I grabbed my camera and headed inside the temple to take some photos of the stunning sanctum, before retiring to my room for the night.

Stifling heat arrested me from my sleep in the morning. There was no ventilation whatsoever in the foreigners' quarters. I also woke to a sound. A kind of sound I didn't really want to wake up to. Fast, rhythmic slapping. Fuck. Turns out the creepy MacBook guy didn't just look creepy. What does one do? Getting out of bed in that situation would have been incredibly embarrassing for both of us. I simply decided to play dead until I was sure he was finished.

I heard the door creak open. The Japanese girl had stored her backpack in our room, and she had just had the dubious honour of walking in on Blondie showing himself a good time. In a fucking temple, of all places. Ugh. The door creaked shut again, very quickly. I continued playing dead.

A short while after, the door again. This time, it veritably flew open. In heavily accented English, the Sikh guard bellowed "You! Never come back!"

I waited a few more minutes until Blondie had grabbed his things and fucked off before I finally plucked up the courage to get out of bed. Feeling very dirty, I might add.

I wandered to McDonald's to get some breakfast. McDonald's doesn't serve beef or pork products anywhere in India, as it's against the law for them to do so. But here in Amritsar, there's a sign on the door stating that they don't serve any meat products whatsoever. No chicken, no fish. This is a holy city and you will eat vegetarian food only, dammit. (This is actually a thing in India; vegetarians - but not vegans - are seen as being morally superior, and most restaurants will have a specific, and much smaller, section of their menu for non-vegetarians.)

I ordered a Corn & Cheese McMuffin Meal - still with a hash brown and Coke, thankfully - and replied to a message from a Couchsurfing host in Lahore, 40 kilometres and an entire world away from Amritsar. I could feel my heart beating in my throat. I still had to figure out how to get to the border, but I was beyond excited to set foot in Pakistan.

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