We had taken a 14 hour train ride from Jaipur up to Amritsar and had some interesting encounters (I swear... old Indian ladies will ALWAYS make you feel guilty if you have a bottom tier of a sleeper car even if that's the one you were assigned...) We got into the station and I was a little distraught because it was pouring. (Go figure, it's monsoon season) I was worried though because we were literally leaving in like seven hours and I wanted to get pictures of the Golden Temple and actually go and visit it.
By the time we got to the hotel (we just rented it for like 4 hours so that we could shower and change... it ended up being a great move later on...)
The good thing was that by the time we were done getting ready it had stopped raining and was only slightly drizzling. So I decided to not risk the nice camera and I brought along my little cannon powershot. It was SO worth it. So great!
And it stopped raining as soon as we got there! Yay! Everything was still wet, but it was ok. We had to walk around barefoot anyways because it is the most sacred place of the Sikhs. It was neat being there. It was very peaceful and there were scriptures and hymns being read/sung.
It was also just gorgeous. The whole place is marble with the exception of the temple which is plated in gold. Well, enough description, here are some pictures!
The view from our hotel. The palace is literally hidden from view from that blue building. But we were RIGHT next door! :)
Ta-da! The Golden Temple. We had to cover up our heads while on the temple grounds hence the scarves.
Pathway to the temple... you could go in and see their sacred book and people chanting and praying around it.
The complex, those two towers are about where our hotel was located...
This is made out of like 500 lbs of gold... incredible
The entire outer area was made out of white marble. It was SO pretty. And slippery...
There were some colored marble inlays on the larger courtyards and special areas. They were SO intricate!
One of the big courtyards in front of the pathway to the Golden Temple.
Detail work in the room where they house their sacred book at night.
One of the other cool things about being there was the timing. By the time we got to the temple, it had cleared up and was getting close to sunset. While we were there we were able to see the sun go low enough to illuminate the building and provide some pretty gorgeous shots.
Magnificent
So. Dang. Gorgeous.
Overall going to Amritsar was completely wonderful. It put us at ease and we were able to relax which would prove to be useful later that night. We had a transfer that night at 3 in the morning to go to our next station.
Our train from Amritsar to wherever we were going ended up being 3 hours late and we missed out train to Kalka. That was such a pain. I was so tired that I just slept until we got to the next train station.
Drew however had a little bit different of an experience. While on the train ride from Amritsar, he was able to talk to 4 different Sikh men who were about his age. It was a funny story that I'll let him do in a post.
After getting to our connection town, we had to RUN to catch a bus to get to Kalka. Let me tell you how much fun it is to be in an Indian city in the north where there AREN'T that many tourists and you get on a bus. Poor Drew had to stand because our luggage took up one of our two seats... But we made it to Kalka.... only to realize that I had booked our train tickets wrong. We were supposed to go on a Himalayan express train to see the landscapes and when I had read it online it seemed like Kalka was the BEGINNING of the trains. It ended up being the ENDING of the trains so we weren't able to see the cool Himalayan sights. When we go back to India we're spending like 2 weeks just in the Himalayas.
After realizing that we had gotten the wrong train and weren't going to spend the day seeing the Himalayas, we both just crashed in the train depot. We went to the waiting area and Drew slept while I stayed awake and tried to keep an eye on things. It was ok just resting but not as fun as I could have imagined.
We finally got on our train and it was our first air-conditioned car at that point. So far we had only had sleeper 3C non-air conditioning cars which are about the cheapest besides the chair cars. However, for this ride it actually ended up being cheaper to take the AC and it guaranteed us a ticket. So we went in and it was fun to get a spot. We got to watch the landscape pass by and see the lovely foothills of the Himalayas. It was too foggy to really see any of the larger Himalayas, but even the foothills were as big as some mountains in the Rockies.
We get to Delhi (at the 3rd Delhi railway station that we've been to mind you...) and get in a pre-paid auto. This turned out to be a great choice since the other people were trying to charge us 4x as much. It was also neat because we shared with this guy who had been backpacking through India and Nepal. He had just come back from a trip to Nepal hiking with a German guy he ran into in the Adman Islands. He told us some fun stories about seeing Nepal (also on my to-do list) and the unfortunate nature of Indian governance and having to bribe his way to get things to work right.
But we found our hotel and went straight to bed. We were going to Agra the next day! So much fun!
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