Amritsar - Amritsar, India
Amritsar, India
Leaving Pushkar and disembarking at nearby Ajmer station, two things were apparent. 1. I was about to undertake the longest single transport journey of the entire trip. In fairness you couldn’t even really call the Ajmer-Amritsar rail journey an overnight trip, as it’s planned duration was almost a full 24 hours. And 2. I knew my stay and next steps could go in many directions, Once I arrived in Amritsar, following the circuit breaking realisations I'd had in Pushkar (see previous blog post). And what unfolded, was very different to anything I’d expected.
So hopping on at Ajmer Junction station for this monster of a rail journey, I did my best to smile and offer a sense of friendliness to the people on my carriage in spite of the persistent English-Hindi communication barrier. I actually met an interesting, English speaking guy, originally from down south in Kerala, who sold goats in Ajmer and other northern locations. But by far, the passenger who really stood out was a local from Punjab (my destination state), who offered me a sleeper seat that had been vacated by his absent wife. This enabled me to move from my shared normal seat, to a place where I could sleep far more comfortably for the night.
Later on, I realised that I was very lucky to even be admitted on the train, let alone get an upgrade to a sleeper seat. New to purchasing online train tickets at the time, I didn't realise the code on my pass ‘WL9’ actually indicated I was the 9th person on the waiting list for a seat. I could so easily have been told to remain in Ajmer if I hadn’t progressed through the waiting list, and goodness knows how I would’ve gotten to Amritsar then. Oblivious to all this at the time however, I enthusiastically moved to the sleeper seat I’d be often offered. My sleep was was pretty restful, minus the trips to the particularly dodgy toilets. I'll spare you any graphic descriptions. In the morning I managed to charge up my phone and use it to get through some work on note-taking for this blog.
It was in the early afternoon that three late teenage / young adult guys who worked as attendants in the train decided to come and interrupt my blog writing. It was a difficult thing to manage because I was very keen to keep progressing, but as I'd tried to do ever since Bhubaneshwar, I wanted to be generous with my time to others......and clearly they were very interested in this opportunity to spend some time with a foreigner.
So I kind of mixed my attention between my blog and these three attendants. It was quite awkward with one of the three in particular. He could barely communicate with me, but just stuck around forever, not allowing me to get back to writing. It got a little better when all three were eventually sitting there. One of them could scratch out a bit of English, so communication was a bit easier. Initially it was going alright, but after a while I started getting tired of it. It was the first time in India that I really wasn’t finding strangers I’d met to be hospitable and pleasant.
They kept on making comments in Hindi that sounded derisive (by the laughter), and kept trying to talk about 'sexy girls'. Anyone who knows me knows I have no qualms having a bit of fun about an attractive girl, the dating scene and the like (Jeesh my trip til this point had been filled with this preoccupation). But I found these guys and their constant talking about it to be a bit......disturbing, especially after having recently read some articles about the link between porn and domestic violence. India has seen some horrific rapes in recent times, so I was actually quite forthright in trying to communicate to the boys that I wasn't interested in their questions and that I thought there were better things to talk about. Of course they weren't exactly criminals, but if this attitude is common in young guys in India, I didn’t think it was a good cultural climate. LOL…..then again, maybe I was becoming old and a bit of a wowser?! What do you think?
The 21 hour scheduled train ride, would you believe, was actually running right on time and threatened to be my first on time rail arrival in India. But that prospect was shattered only 20 minutes out from Amritsar Junction station. Of all the places, so close to the destination, the train stopped for a combined total of 2 hours. By the time we pulled in I was just short of having been on the train for an entire day!
I suppose I should have known better by then, but I had an image in my mind of a holy and renown place like Amrtisar, being cleaner and more refined, than the other cities of India. Departing the station and getting the free yellow bus, my journey across town quickly dispelled that notion. Looking out the window, I saw the usual crowded city streets, with crazy traffic pyrotechnics and beeping all around. But anyway, in my burnt out state (courtesy of the extended train ride), I managed to find my way to the free (donation based) foreigners guesthouse within Amritsar's Golden temple compound.
Amritsar has many claims to fame, being the capital of Punjab state, and bordering with Pakistan. The latter was evident in the heightened military presence on the streets. But Amritsar is most famous for the Golden Temple, a structure and compound of immense holiness, service and pilgrimage for Sikhs. I managed to summon the energy to go for a sojourn, firstly partaking in some free food (Parshan) provided in the temple, much like what I’d encountered with ISKCON and the Hare Krishnas in Delhi.
But this Parshan operation was immensely impressive in its scale and efficiency, with at least 120 Sikh volunteers running a 'clockwork' production line of preparing the food, distributing plates, distributing food, chaperoning guests out, and then washing drying and stacking an incredibly high number of plates for redistribution. I love seeing people being of service, but it's even more impressive when seeing the Sikhs do it with so much efficiency and fervour.
I then made my way to see the square courtyard lake where the Sikh golden temple could be found in the center. It was an absolutely stunning sight, with a buzzing, pulsating atmosphere. You can check out an array of photographs capturing the night beauty of this temple and the surrounding architecture. Afterwards I decided to head out to a Lonely Planet recommended restaurant....involving a bit of trek through the town.
My trek revealed nothing particularly different from what I’d encountered before in Indian cities. Although rightly or wrongly, I had the impression that poorer people had a rougher deal in Amritsar compared to other places. I also definitely got a whiff of that entrepreneurial, merchant culture Punjabis are so well known for, with so many small stores down the alleyways all working late into the night to stack their stores with newly arrived goods. In particular I saw a surprising number of blanket packs being stacked by almost all stores. I assumed that these would be in high demand during the coming winter months.
The food at the restaurant was superb. Punjabi cuisine was definitely my favourite in India, and most of the Indian cuisine I'd already had and liked through the trip until then, could be sourced in Punjab. However, I shouldn't have eaten as much as I did, after eating Parshan earlier. And bad habits had well and truly gotten the best of me by this stage of the journey, with me stopping for an ice cream on the way home. So it shouldn't surprise most of you that I suffered from an upset stomach that night and some unpleasant gastro....much like what I'd encountered in Auroville through to Bangalore and early on in Bhubaneshwar.
If my time in Pushkar was a circuit breaker concerning my approach to travel, my time in Amritsar was a circuit breaker on the grounds of health. I noted before (see the 'Bangalore' blog) how the the lack of routine and day-to-day consistency was not a good recipe for my health in India. In Australia, I had built up an array of good eating and healthy lifestyle habits, which came undone very quickly through the first 4-5 weeks of this trip. First I’d started eating junk food, sugar, and gluten as a matter of course (rather than as an exception). By about the 3 week mark, maybe in Calcutta, I had started to stop morning meditation, and I'd been fighting a losing battle ever since to do even a short stint each day. And even though I still managed to do some push ups in my room on a semi-regular basis, you could forget cardio. Other habits like looking too much at facebook and cricinfo (every cricket fanatics’ website) had crept up hugely too, to the detriment of me being present to my experiences on the trip. Despite all this deterioration I could observe in my disciplines, I still had such a busy itinerary planned, without any regularity, something I’d now realised I depended on for discipline, as otherwise I would never summon the motivation or energy to get things back into order, like I would in normal life.
Many of these poor disciplines, especially my eating habits, were fuelled from a desire to escape stress. I can be a bit of stress-dynamo in normal life at the best of times, but in India it was my constant companion. I've described numerous times in previous blogs about all the uncertainty. So often challenges had come up which I wasn’t prepared for, all the while trying to negotiate living conditions that I wasn’t used to. If I wasn’t uncertain, I was almost always on guard when encountering all manner of beggars and tourist industry pundits I perceived to be cheating me out of money. I was also very much on guard against very real reality of being one dodgy mosquito bite away from contracting dengue fever. And then finally there was all the stress I inflicted on myself, with so many may priceless stuff ups, from the moment I left Australia’s shores. I lacked attention to important details and habits as well, like remembering to use hand sanitizer. Even if I had started getting a better handle on things on all these stressful aspects of the trip and travelling lifestyle to date, by that stage my day to day disciplines that had kept me sane and healthy in normal life had been hot to pieces (see previous paragraph). No doubt, health and well being wise, I was in bad shape!
So that night and the next morning in Amritsar, I felt the combined impact of it all from a health and well-being point of view. My upset stomach and gastro, something that wouldn't have happened under the disciplines I would normally have had in normal, routine life, was made worse by wheezing and an increasingly chronic cough that had built up from poor diet and lack of exercise. This woke me many times during the night, so that I ended up with very uncomfortable fever that throbbed with the coughing. I knew that if I kept travelling in the same pace and manner I had, a 'creature of routine' like myself would never find the will or motivation to get my health back in order.
I was meant to travel to Dharamsala next, but I’d had enough. I decided to back up my resolve to slow down and seek more fulfilling travel experiences (see the ‘Pushkar’ blog) now, by taking the loss on the tickets I'd booked in Delhi, skipping Dharamsala and Manali. These far northern locations would have to wait for another time, and preferably with warmer weather. I also decided that Amritsar, wasn't a place I wanted to stay for a longer period. It was time to go to a destination that resonated with my personal intentions, and which sounded as though it could offer a change of pace, allowing much needed rest and recuperation.
It was time to take the advice of fellow travellers and head to Rishikesh. Even with all the sickness I was under in the morning, I came up with a plan to find a direct sleeper train to Haridwar (near Rishikesh) that would leave in the evening. And then I had an ambitious, if risky, idea to add to the mix. I remembered all the way back before coming to India, this intuitive sense I’d had that it’s be a good idea to try out an Ayurvedic retreat. My motivation for trying such a retreat was minimal during my early days travelling through Kerala, despite ayurvedic retreat centers being abundant. My desire to return to good health had never been stronger now though, ironically at the other opposite end of India where Ayurvedic retreat centers were scarce . Even still, I figured that if there was going to be an Ayurvedic center on the same scale as those found in Kerala, it’s be in Rishikesh. I mean after all, it is the new age mind-body-spirit and yoga hub for such-inclined travellers to India.
Even though I now had a plan, my morning was a rotten affair. All the wheezy, and at time virulent, coughing during the night had hammered my head into a fever, with a rotten sick feeling in my stomach to complement. Some of the other foreigners staying in the hostel were lovely in offering to go and buy me medicine while going out sightseeing. They could see I was looking pale. When I was left alone I did what I could in my sorry state, and with poor internet connection, to search for trains and Ayurvedic retreat centres in Rishikesh. Finding a the train was blessedly fine, with plenty of seats available on a sleeper train later in the night. I was a bit apprehensive about going on sleeper class, as I’d heard it could get pretty rough. Also, after scouring the web I eventually identified a place in Rishikesh that appeared to be a genuine ayurvedic retreat centre, as opposed to one of the many yoga establishments that simply throw in some ayurvedic treatment on the side. Not really knowing what to expect, and trusting my pro-ayurvedic intuitions I'd had before coming to India, I ended up paying quite a large amount for 6.5 days of retreat; almost $1300 AUD. I figured that if I was going to try some Ayurveda style detoxing, I didn’t want to do it by half.
The remaining afternoon passed fairly slowly, with me in no state to wander around the golden temple any further. Besides a brief wander for a little food, and for an internet cafe to make my reservations (because mobile data was so damn unreliable!), I passed my time in the hostel resting. I was disappointed by one experience as I wandered around the surrounding town around the temple. When buying some food for some street beggars I came across, I'm sure the street food vendors charged more than what they usually would’ve. But in my sick state I was in no mood to argue with savvy, enterprising Punjabi street folk.
I was starting to feel mildly better by the time I gingerly walked out of the temple guesthouse to grab a taxi. I was grateful about being able to settle on a fair price, needing little haggling with the auto rickshaw driver, as I made my way up to Amritsar Junction station. There were some friendly locals on the platform who were keen to have a little fun chatting while we waited for yet another late train. And would you believe for once there was plenty of space in my train compartment! Whatever little aesthetic comforts I had lost because of taking a cheaper, sleeper class train seat, were more than made up for by not having to share compartment space with so many people. Even the bathrooms were clean on this train! I think I got lucky that time, and I’m glad it worked out that way on reflection, as it ended up being my last intercity or overnight train journey for the entire trip.