Amritsar, The Golden Temple, and the best March Fighting ever

This past weekend Rachel and I completed an adventure of near Epic proportions. We caught the train Friday afternoon and arrived 6 hours later in Amritsar in the northern state of Punjab. Amritsar, for those of you who are Bollywood savvy, is the city featured in 'Bride and Prejudice'. It was a truly awesome trip, after arriving at around 11:30pm we made our way to the golden temple and slept in the pilgrim's lodging just inside the temple complex. The lodging was rudimentary, but the price was right (Free-ninety-free). The beds were wooden planks with thin mats over them. It made for a long night, but it was a great experience. After our restless night in the bowels of a pilgrim horde we got up and went into the Golden temple complex. The temple is one of the most amazing places in the world. The golden Temple is the holiest place on earth for the Sikhs, and as far as Indian temple's go it's not hard to see why, the temple is just amazing. It is surrounded by a huge lake, and that is surrounded by a white marble courtyard all around the temple. The entire area is covered with pilgrims from all different religions, but the Sikhs especially are reverent and kind all around Amritsar. It was raining most of that day so some of the really neat places we were able to go we did not take pictures of.
One of the other place we went to was the silver temple, this temple is the Hindu version of the Golden temple and looks very very similar. They call it the Silver temple because of the solid silver doors that adorn its marbled halls. The silver temple is much smaller than the golden temple and is much less impressive, but it was interesting to see the differences between Hindu and Sikh priorities. After the silver temple we went to another temple in Amritsar known as the Cave Temple. The cave temple is a shrine for a lady that died in the 1970's and is supposed to be like a patron saint of fertility. So basically if your a young lady and you need to have a baby you go to the Cave Temple.
The temple is interesting, it is not really adorned with precious things like most of the temples, it is mosiaced with glass and mirror, giving it the appearance of a fun house. Also, there are portions were you have to get on your hands and knees and crawl, there is even a part were you have to wade through some water, giving it the artificial appearance of a cave. We are not sure what the symbolism of the cave theme is, but it was funny any way you look at it. Probably the most peculiar thing we did on our trip was attend the border ceremony at the pakistan-india border in Wagah. So every single night, just outside of this small town you find a ceremony at the only official border crossing from india to pakistan. The ceremony basically consists of a whole bunch of people gathering at either side of the border, for about an hour they play music and people dance and cheer. Then at about 6:30 they start the official program where in soldiers in huge fin looking hats march around and yell a lot.But that's not the best part, after marching around and yelling, the soldiers march towards the gates of the other country and then the Indian Soldiers and the



Pakistani soldiers have a march off. That's right, the soldiers try to outdo one another by stamping and kicking high in the air. The whole time the crowds are just going nuts and the competition is fierce. After their little march fight, they shake hands and close the gates. Then they lower the flags at the same time and that's that. Afterwords the crowds converge on the soldiers to get signatures and pictures. It is seriously like a sporting event, and we have never seen anything like it. All in all it was a great trip with a lot of neat things to see and do, but the best was probably just the beauty of the Golden temple and the amazing Sikhs all around that were so nice and so reverent.

Weekend at the Taj Mahal

We went to Agra this past weekend to the home of the Taj Mahal. Our traveling buddies were Ben Smith and Krista, one of Rachel's friends from work. We took a 3 hr super deluxe "executive class" train from New Delhi at 6 in the morning. Apparently executives are treated very well in India because we got a free newspaper and fresh rose when we got on the train, and then a 3 course breakfast was served to us throughout our trip. Not to mention that we had to lean forward to reach our tray tables because there was so much room between our seats and the ones in front of them. Upon arrival in Agra, we hired a driver to take us around for the day. Our first stop was Fatehpur Sikri. Here's a little Fatehpur Sikri history for you ala Wikipedia: It was the political capital of India's Mughal Empire under Akbar's reign, from 1571 until 1585, when it was abandoned, ostensibly due to lack of water. It is located in what is now Uttar Pradesh, India. It's made of red sandstone, so any of the pictures you see with red stone are probably in Fatehpur Sikri. After that we did a little sightseeing and ended our tour of Agra at the Taj Mahal, truly a wonder of the world. The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum that was built under Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. He was later deposed by his son and locked up in Agra Fort. When he died, he was placed beside his wife in the Taj Mahal. According to legend, Shah Jahan cut off the hands of all his workers after they finished the Taj so that they could never replicate their work. Also according to legend, there was supposed to be an exact replica of the Taj Mahal made of black marble built across the river for Shah Jahan's tomb, but when his son deposed him, the building was never constructed. Upon further research, we found out that these legends were unfounded and probably untrue (too bad!) We spent a few hours at the Taj Mahal just sitting on the upper level and watching the sun set over the river. We took the Delux train back in time for church the next morning. On a sad note, the Smith family had to return to the States to take care of their ailing grandparents. We expect them back in a few weeks.