Alright, I am going to skip forward just a bit – after Pushkar Cousin Helen and I went to Jaipur for Holi and then a day in Agra to marvel at the splendor of the Taj Mahal.  We left Agra in the dead of night after spending several hours loitering in the train terminals and waiting for the train that was, naturally, late.

Indian trains are either perfectly and exactly on time and you rapidly board the train and go on your merry way, or, as if often the case, they force you to spend several mind-numbingly dull hours staring at the train-tracks while every Indian in the vicinity watches your every move.  I get the impression that they expect that in my overwhelming whiteness I may, at any moment, jump up in song and dance to entertain them.

Funnily enough, not one to disappoint my fans, that is just the thing that I have done.  More than once.  Maybe even more than twice.

With the lyrics to one Bollywood dance hit now stashed in my repertoire (the song playing in the Tulsi Palace dance video), if the staring gets too intense I have, much to Cousin Helen’s embarrassment, bust out with some truly horrific, bollywood-eque, jutting, pulsating, shimmying dance moves to the sounds of my own tone deaf singing and the occasional clapping that quickly accompanies my display of ridiculousness.  Not only do I find this wildly amusing, but it’s always a hit with those around me who watched me as if they knew, before I even knew, that I was going to bust a move.

Conversely, once the dancing is over, they seem just as pleased to stare for minutes on end as Helen and I do nothing more than lightly bob our heads in time to the music playing on our MP3 players.

So we waited out our time in Agra and finally made it onto the train for the 17 hour bus ride that would take us into the North of India.  We bypassed Delhi at this point since we have to fly out of there to get to Kathmandu, and headed straight for Amritsar, which is on the border with Pakistan and is in the heart of the Punjabi area of India.  Stepping off the train we could immediately see some of the obvious differences – we were surrounding by a sea of turbans greeting us as we ascended the platform steps to exit the train station.

Amritsar is home to the holiest temple in Sikhism, the Golden Temple.  Throughout my time in India I have read several books either about the country or written by Indian authors.  By the time we got to Amritsar Helen and I were both interested to witness the calm splendor of this gold-plated temple.  A lot of the books we have read have mentioned the unrest that occurred in the 1980′s in this region – there were huge Sikh-Hindi clashes and the former Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi was actually assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards because she ordered military action to take place in this holy temple.

With all of this information swimming in our heads we grabbed an autorickshaw and headed into town.  The rickshaws are actually not allowed in areas of the old-town around the temple because of air and noise pollution.  So, we hoofed our way to our hotel, dropped  our bags and headed to the temple for some relaxing time by the sacred pool that surrounds the Golden Temple.

Even without big vehicles, the area around the temple has a frenetic pace that is more than a bit overwhelming.  I can’t say that I fell in love with the city – I actually couldn’t wait to leave.  But the temple was really worth seeing – although I don’t know much about Sikhism, I found it really interesting to sit and watch the Sikhs bath in the sacred lake.  All of the Sikh children of every age were taken to the water’s edge, stripped of their clothes, and dipped into the waters.  Older Sikhs also stripped down to boxers and soaked themselves in the waters.

Amritsar was just a quick stop on the trip on our way north to Dharmshala but it was really neat to get a taste of the Punjabi culture.  Everyone, even small children have to cover their heads in some fashion- plus we saw turbans of every color and studied up on the different meanings of the colored turbans.  The children were pretty proud to sport little bun-type turbans and gladly let us snap a lot of pictures!

A video from the temple: