INDIA - One day
in Bombay & onto Punjab
Written
by Aaron
We started a three day train journey up to Amritsar, the Sikh city in the Punjab, where there had been a train crash a month before, a big train crash, lots of people died, right on the tracks that we went over. We caught the train to Bombay, and then had a day to spend in Bombay/Mumbai before catching the night train, a real 36 hour ride up to Amritsar. The trains in India are something to see. The airlines in India handle around 12 million passenger a year. The trains handle 11 million a day. They are amazing, but I'll get to that a little later.
Our day in Mumbai, the Indian name, Bombay the British name, was amazing. The train ride in the morning in I will never forget. I stood in the open door as we went through the slums on the outskirts, and there were people everything, living everywhere, squeezed into spaces not meant for dogs. People had planted crops in the narrow strip between the railroad tracks and the shanties that were stuffed next to the mouldering, skyscraping apartment buildings. I saw people cooking breakfast over their morning cooking fires on the outskirts of India's most modern and clean city. We arrived, found a Sikh to take care of us, and he got us a driver and a car for the day at the price we wanted. Sikhs are like potatos, you can find them all over the world, and they are like potatos in that they are so hardy and good for the world. The only reason we were going to Amritsar was to visit the Sikh's Golden Temple there.
We started our day in Bombay wretchedly tired. We had to get our train tickets confirmed and that took us hours, but we made it to the Taj Mahal Hotel next to the Gate of India just in time for breakfast. The Oriental in Bangkok has been voted the best hotel in Asia, but I think it is the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. The breakfast was good, we got too much food, but the real treat was the central staircase in the hotel. It reminded me of the Aya Sofia in Instanbul, the second biggest dome in the world, I believe. But it was majestic. We loved our driver, a great guy who made us realize how bad Chuckles had been. For a day we tipped the driver almost as much as we tipped Chuckles, and Chuckles drove us around for weeks. He took us to a CD shop and we bought samples of the music we had heard all over India, including a CD from Breakthrough records (www.letsbreakthrough.com) which is fighting for women rights in India. The CD brought us to tears when we listened to it in Bangkok. We then went for books, more books, and more books, at Crosswords, a great bookstore in Bombay. After that, we checked email, and finished the day off at MacDonald's. I got a Maharaja Mac, not a Big Mac which is a beef burger, but a Maharaja Mac which is lamb. God bless MacDonald's, that joyfully worldwide corporation that is bringing American culture to those less fortunate. The MacDonald's was packed! It was THE place to be. We bid our driver a tearful farewell, and then got on the night train.
The train to Bombay to Amritsar was full of mice and roaches. Laura put a plate of food down, one minute later it was crawling with roaches. The train had a stop in Dehli, and we knew Katie was there, but we toughed it out and got off in Amritsar the next morning. We hadn't showered for three days, but that was a part of our final weeks in India, no showers, no power, and just a running drudge toward the finish line.
December 31, 2000, Amritsar. After the roach coach, we wanted a nice place, so we stayed at the Mohan International Hotel, the best hotel in Amritsar, fifty dollars a night. They had armed men outside...we were kind of close to Pakistan and there had been a series of attacks in the last days of 2000. We walked through a cabal of machine gun toting Sikhs, checked in, showered, and slept til noon. Laura then started to get sick, and so we had to curtail all activity for the day. We did get to see Star Movies 2001:A Bond Odyssey, and watched specials on Pierce Brosnan, 007, and then Tomorrow Never Dies, go Michelle Yeoh! And after that, I caught Major Payne on HBO. What a treat that was! He, he, he. Don't nobody need any killin'? He, he, he.
January 1, 2001, a very Sikh New Year. Laura was still sick, but we had to go and check out Amritsar. Other than Bombay and Pondicherry, it was the cleanest city we had seen with sidewalks and everything. The people were great and helped us get around, but the highlight was the Golden Temple. The Sikh religion was started as an attempt to take the best of Islam and Hinduism and bring them together. Of course after that, they were killed and oppressed because, well, some people are invited to God's table and others aren't invited to God's table. Unlike the Catholic Church, unlike the Hindu temples, unlike anything we had seen before, the Golden Temple and the Sikhs were open and welcome to all visitors. We were told that the Golden Temple was our temple, we could go where we wanted, and we were even invited, like everyone else, to eat at the temple. Sitting on the floor, we were given dal and chapathi and treated with respect, as was everyone else. We tried to give a donation, and the guy wouldn't take the money. We were both brought to tears by how nice and open the Sikhs were, and how all religions could learn a lot from them. We had numerous invitations to eat with people and to visit people's homes, and other than Rajasthan, the Golden Temple was the high point of our trip to India. If you go to India, you have not seen how wonderful it can be until you have been to Amritsar.
After the Golden Temple, we made our way through parades celebrating the birth of a guru, I forget which one, and to celebrate the New Year, and we saw a park commemorating the 1919 slaughter of India Freedom Marchers. It was to the Brits what Wounded Knee was to the Americans, an embarrasment and a source of shame. Like Wounded Knee, the British army fired on a crowd of unarmed, peaceful people without provacation and killed thousands. It was sobering, and it was within walking distance of the Golden Temple, which made it all the more provocative. Religion can be such a source of power and good in the world, but most of the time it squanders its message, alienates people, and brings violence and death. Again, we should learn from the Sikhs, all are welcome, everyone.
The volunteers preparing the food to be served in the great dining hall. Note the bags of onions and garlic being cleaned and prepared by hand. The Dahl was excellent!
Aaron hanging out with some of the many friendly locals at the Golden Temple
The parade to celebrate a Guru's birthday. It was lots of fun and very colorful.
I'm ready to read more, onto the New Delhi & the Taj Mahal.
I'm lost, take me back to the India home page!