Amritsar-Vaishno Devi--DAY 2

FRIDAY, 03-04-09

After getting up from not-so-good sleep, 'coz someone was snoring horribly, we went to Golden Temple for a dip in the holy tank. After the dip, which was fun, came back to hotel, freshened up, and headed to Jallianwala Bagh after checking out from the hotel. There, we saw the Amar Jyoti, the Memorial, bullet marks, Martyr's Well and the museum. We had a small discussion relating to the official and unofficial counts of bodies and rounds fired. After visiting the whole Jallianwala Bagh, a thought came to my mind that, how could Britain, one of the most civilised countries of those times, honour General Dyer with the title of Sir, after such a heinous act?

After having a brunch of Dosas, we again went inside Golden Temple, this time for darshan. After getting in the main building, in my mind, I went back to those days when I used to stay in Mumbai and visited Haji Ali whenever some relatives came over. After the darshan, we visited the Central Sikh Museum, where we came to know a bit about Sikh history. Then, we bought souvenirs and "kadas" for ourselves. "Punjab aake Lassi nahi piyenge, aisa kabhi ho sakta hai?", said Sandy. SO all 3 of us had a glass full of Malaiwala Lassi. We were then looking for a taxi to Wagah Border. After negotiations with a few of them, we finally fixed a private car at Rs.350. But when we were being led to the taxi, a foreigner was walking along with us. It was quite surprising when that driver told us she would sharing our cab. We tried to reason out the deal we had made with the driver, but he said he was helpless as she had been pestering him along with her 'hotel wala' to take her too. So we were 3 helpless dumb people, who couldn't even think what to do. Anyways we travel in a Maruti 800 to Wagah, in between passing the famous Khalsa College, where SRK-starrer Rab Ne Banadi Jodi was filmed, and OCM Mills. When we reached within 1/2 km of Wagah Border, we were asked by the driver to leave our bags inside the car itself. "How can I leave my passport and Visa in the car?", asked the lady. But she was not allowed to take the bag inside. So she had to carry her passport and Visa in her hands and leave the rest with the driver. By the way, her name was Manu, short for something which I didn't hear. She was a French National and Accountant by profession. As we walked towards the main area, we passed along the immigrations office, customs office and a temple. Manu had to go to the VIP area while we were suppose to seat in the amphitheatre-type stands.

After we reached those stands, we saw a huge crowd on the Indian side, while not so many people on the other side of the border. Patriotic songs of Bollywood were being played at high volume. People were asked to settle down. The announcer seemed to be some Captain or something. He said we could only chant "Hindustan Zindabad", "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" and "Vande Mataram" and nothing else. We saw girls, small kids and women were allowed to run to the gate with national flag in their hand. They were also encouraged to dance to the songs being played. Then, as everyone eventually settled down, the 25-min long parade started with the sound of bugle and orders from a sentry. People chanted as instructed and were making noise, encouraging the jawaans. We saw the opening of the gates, the hand-shakes, the famous "High Leg Lift" steps of jawaans, the taunts, the lowering of flags, orders and march till 6:15 PM. We returned to our cab after taking snaps of the Swarna Jayanti Dwar, No Man's Land and the Electric Fencing on the border. It was totally an unusual experience.

While returning to the main city, we stopped at the Khalsa College gates to takes pictures of the well-lit building. After dropping Manu at her hotel, we went on to experience the Amritsari Gol-gappas but it turned out to be a bad session. Then we strolled into a restaurant for our dinner. An attempt to have Mushroom Masala for Sandy and myself failed when the waiter brought us a wrong order of Paneer Butter Masala. Dipak, as usual, was happy with his Chowmein. After dinner, and an attempt to charge my cell phone, we again entered Golden Temple, this time to rest for a while before catching a train to Jammu Tawi which was at 01:20 in the morning. While the other two slept soundly, I was struggling with my unnecessary luggage. At around 11:45 we decide to head for the station, as we were not sure whether we would find any conveyance at that point of time. After we reached station, we had to wait for 1/2 hr before our train arrived from Bhatinda. When we occupied our berths, we breathed a sigh of relief as we had just a night's journey which we would spend sleeping....