First Days in India

Me and Sabine
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Whatever you have heard about India it's true. Amazing, filthy, beautiful, firghtening, poor........it doesn't matter which adjective you choose you could find a place and situatiojn to use it, probably in the first two hours. Especially when the taxi drops you off in a Delhi back alley lined on both sides with sleeping dogs, cows and people. Perhaps we should have booked a room! Fortunately the Anoop 'Hotel' is open 24hrs and we are able to escape quickly to the rooftop restaurant for a 1am vegetable curry.

Main Bazar
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The next morning I wake up, though I'm not sure when as our room has no windows. But breakfast on the roof is a nice experience in the eerily beautiful orange haze of this industrtial mecca. Looking back I guess it was a little too relaxing as it perpared me in no way for the challenge to come, the streets of India.

Dehli doesn't have too many tourist attractions in the traditional sense, except of course for an 'everyday life' that is unreplicated by any other world city. Everyday, for a Kiwi kid, is unrecognisable in the bazaars and markets where cliches like bustling metropolis don't get halfway to describe the overpopulated madness, sleavy undertones, and deafening smells. Ah, the smells, Delhi has the full range, from fragrant street food, to knee-buckling bodily waste. The sights are wonderful and shocking with magical orange and green saris followed closely by leprosy victims dragging themselves around on the pavement. Fortunately the 'hotel' (term used loosely) is an easy place to escape to as we often do in our first few days in India. But we want to see something.

Temple Gates
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From Delhi things began to calm down, marginally, as we headed north and away from the addicts, school children and shop keepers of Indias capital to Amritsar the site of the Golden Temple, the most holy site for the worlds Seikhs. It is as the name suggests a magnificaent golden structure set on a large, man-made body of water, not quite a lake but better than a pond. It is surrounded on all sides by a complex of pure white buildings holding a museum, eating and sleeping halls and the offices of the high priests. Pilgrims stream in from all parts of India to see the temple's great treasure, the writings of Guru Granth Sahib, the founder of Seihkism. Every night the book is moved from the temple into the main complex amid a mele of epic proportions as 5,000 worshipers grapple to help carry the holy relics chariot, as guards with shining spears try to keep the throngs at bay with forceful shoves and cold looks. At all other times though the the temple is an oasis of calm seemingly unaware of the incomprehensible chaos of India beyond its walls. As you wander slowly around the lakes marble perimeter alongside Seihks dressed variously in ancient splendour (complete with scabbard), business suits or rags you realise that no matter which religion you are, in these places reverance, like laughter, is contagious.

Golden Temple
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Amritsar though is a one horse town and after two days its time to head for the hills, the foothills of the Himalayas and the Tibetan exile community at McCloed Ganj.