The Golden Temple

We reached Amritsar early on Saturday morning. It was still dark when we arrived so we caught a rickshaw into the city. We were lucky to catch our 1st glimpse of the golden Temple just as the sun was rising.
It's hot and sunny here in Amritsar (the holiest of places if you are a Sikh) It has the most beautiful golden temple set in the middle of a lake. People come here from all over India (and the rest of the world we met a guy from Luton here today) on pilgrimages to visit the holy temple. To enter, you must remove your shoes and anything else which is made of leather and cover your head. Then you walk around the temple in a clockwise direction. The mail building and the pavements are built of white marble which shines in the sunlight. The perimeter of the temple is shady and there is a carpet to walk on which is great as it gets hot and slippy with water as people dip themselves into the holy water of the Nectar lake which surrounds the golden temple in the centre. Volunteers prepare food in a 24 hour kitchen to provide a meal for every cast and faith. It's great food!
We also went to the boarder control yesterday. That was very interesting too. It is on the boarder of India and Pakistan. The guards meet in no-mans-land for a ritual ceremony of high kicks, stamping and head flicking, it's about as aggressive as they can get without actually touching each other. Both sides shout abuse at each other in an atmosphere of controlled hysteria. Very interesting!!
Tonight we travel back to Delhi on the overnight train