I have been in Amritsar for a couple days now and I am having fun. Amritsar is famous for the Golden Temple. It is the holiest temple in India for the Sikhs. The temple is surrounded by 750 kg of pure gold which was donated by Maharaja Ranjit Singh (a King) back in late 1800s. The temple is opened 24/7 and is a place of pilgrimage for Sikhs from all over India and the world. Many men walked into the pool for a holy dip. It appeared that women are not permitted to dip in the holy water. We went to the temple last night to see it during sunset and got up at 4:30 am this morning to see it at sunrise. It is a gorgeous place. My friend Melissa has a nice digital camera and we were playing around with her camera and had some really neat shots...doing yoga pose next tot he temple! The only thing that I did not like about the experience is that we had to take off our shoes to enter the temple. The marble tiles were very cold!
People in India do not see foreigners very often and treat Caucasians and foreigners like movie stars. They wanted to pose pictures with us and asked to shake hands with us. So far,this is true wherever we go in India. The food has been great and I have had praranthas with paneers (fried breads with curried cheese), lassie (yogurt drink), veg pizzas. The cooking oil they used seemed to be very heavy as the meals kind of sat in my stomach so I have only eaten 2 meals a day.
A few of us rode on cycle rickshaws to go to the market and we had a lot of fun...I video taped it and it was hilarious. Traffic in Amritsar is just as crazy as in Delhi. The city is very dusty and the air is filled with smog. There are many dried fruit stores where they sell almonds, walnuts, dried mangoes, masala tea spice and peanut brittle. The fruits here are excellent with juicy oranges at 25 rupees (60 cents per kg ), bananas are 40 rupees per kg and apples are 60 rupees per kg. The papayas are very fresh here but I hadn't bought one yet, however, I had a pomegranate (20 rupees) and it was delicious.
Unfortunately I am not able to send pictures through in the mail as almost all the computers are infected with viruses and I do not want to lose my photos. I will definitely have a photo session when I come back.
We will be heading to Chandigarh tomorrow. It is still in the Punjab state and will take 5 hours to get there and we will be there for a couple nights. We will then head to Rishekesh on the 27th.
I will talk to you later!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment