#3

It's been a while... but hey I'm in India.

There's no hope I can relay all of the experiences I've had over the past week effectively so I'm just going to put some rambling prose out there.

Since we left Delhi much has happened. Amritsar was a very different city from Delhi but a city none the less. It's pretty small and the focal point is the Golden Temple, the holiest of places for the Sikhs. Getting to spend a few days in that place was such a gift. I met dozens of people and was welcomed unconditionally. The golden temple itself is situated in the middle of a man made lake called the tank of nectar. There are countless stories dating from 500 years ago to a few months ago of people making pilgrimages to this water and getting cured of diseases and infirmities. The energy of the temple was palpable. All of the Sikhs who travel there take part in a ritual of bathing in the waters. Men just out in the open strip down to their underwear and women are invited into what looks like a white wooden bathhouse. The premise of Sikhism is that all are welcome no matter their faith, ethnicity, gender, or caste. It was founded in an effort to break down the India caste system. So we all bathed. The girls went into the house and a mass of Sikh women welcomed us and walked us through how we were supposed to do it.
We went back to the temple about 5 times while we were there. The last time we went at 2 in the morning when the temple opens everyday and went inside. Gorgeous.

Though Armitsar was beautiful, we had a bit of an adventure leaving. The day we arrived in Armitsar there was a shooting in Vienna. Some Sikh men entered a place of worship of another sect of Sikhism and opened fire on the leaders. One is recovering and one was killed. At that moment we were in the Sikh capital of the world. Protests, demonstrations, and riots started all over the state we were in and a "Bhund" was put into effect. A bhund is a curfew basically where they close all of the borders to the state, shut down all transportation, and prevent people from meeting in groups after a certain time at night. Being foreigners we wanted to exit the state gracefully and unobtrusively as soon as possible. The manager of our guest hous had a friend who ran a taxi service. We spoke to him and the owner of the service agreed to drive us personally to Dharamsala himself (which by car is about 7 hours). We left around 4 in the morning and drove until we got over the state border. We arrived safely and got over the border with no problems. The bhund didn't end until yesterday.

We spend 4 days in dharamsala home of the Tibetan government in exile and the Dali Lama. Again we were in a very holy place for a totally differnt faith. We went to prayer service one day and the people around us took it upon themselves to help us participate. We were given bowls full of something called tibetan butter tea, which tasted allot like melted butter. It was pretty gross. And different kinds of bread to dip in the tea as the service went on. We hiked a bunch in Dharamsala as well and met many many travelers like ourselves. We are leaving tonight on a 13 bus to Rishikesh to spend 5 days in an ashram.


Hope all is well everyone!

much love

write soon!

K