Weekend Trip

This weekend I headed to The city of Golden Temple Amristar and to the border town Wagah. I planned it for a day's trip as usual with my roommates. Like three to Tango we were three to Amristar. We had booked the tickets for the Golden Temple Mail from Mumbai-Amristar via Delhi. The train was supposed to start at 1735 and as usual it started at 2000hrs IST. The arrival time to Amristar was 0630 and it was 15mins early. Although we had booked the tickets our compartment was like unreserved. We had to fight to get our berths with the fellow passengers.

Our plan was to go to the Golden Temple first, then Jallianwalla bagh followed by the two temples around. My plan was to travel by local transports, like bus or auto, but my friends insisted that we should take a cab so that we can cover all the places without any hassles. As per their suggestion we had taken a cab for Rs. 500/- for the whole day to tour around the city, take us to Wagah and drop us back @ the station.

The Driver was insisting us to take a room and take some rest, but we were to adamant to take his words and told him to take us directly to the Golden Temple. I would tell this is more beautiful than Taj Mahal. The reflection of the temple on the water and the gleaming against the sun makes it a nectar to the eyes. The meaning of Amristar is Pool of Nectar. The temple is situated in the middle of the pond. Most of the people take a dip before entering the Hari Mandir. The whole of the complex is built of white Marble. The Harimandir is copper plated and the doom is a gold plated one.

This temple has been under many treats from the old age till 1984 during when the military entered into it to remove the Sikh extremists. After the 1984 military action the temple had been repaired and that is what we see now. This complex also has a museum in which a person can witness lots of paintings about how Sikh people were tortured by the Moghuls and how brave these people were. But once you see the paintings a normal person cannot eat or have sleep.

Then we headed to Jallianwalabagh where the 1919 Masacar by General Dier took place. It is been told that general had given only 5secs for the 20000 people to vacate through a single pathway where only 2 can move around and also that path was closed by the army personal. There had been 150 army men who had shot 160 rounds of bullet into the human flesh. In this park there is a Amar jyothi a place of honor and all the bullet maks on the wall are framed. Now this place looks like a heaven. There is also a museum inside the park, and there is a writing and painting of a woman who has narrated how the scene was with her dead husband in that ground the whole night.

Then we headed to the Durgania temple which looks like a replica of the Golden temple with very little care and then to the Matta temple. This temple is a replica of the Vaishnova devi situated in Jammu. We had finished all this by 1130hrs, so our driver told he will take to a place called Ram bargh if we pay him another Rs 100. He explained us that place is the only place where Lavakush has temple in India, also our driver told us that is a bi Sarovar(lake) which really beautifull. Once we reached there we found that the lake was dried up they were cleaning it. So we headed to Attari the border town. From Attari it is only 4kms the great Wagah Border. During our travel we were able to see one for Dlhi-Lahore Bus. It was the Pakistani bus, which was escorted by a military pilot and followed by two police jeeps till the immigration entrance. I think the bus normally travels at high speed with a red siren on the top.

We reached Wagah by 1345hrs and so we decided to wait till 1615hrs outside. We had our lunch in one of the Daba's and then waited till 1615hrs. Once the gate was opened we were escorted to the main area by a military person and then we were shown where to sit. There is no word to descibe the emotions of hunders of Indians and the Pakistanis on the other side. Both the arena's were filled by people. It is estimated that everyday there is around 5000 people gather to watch the handshake and the parade done by the BSF and the Indus Rangers on both side.

Explaining that will not be good, because it cannot be explained by words. One has too see it on his own. For me it was like an life time achivement. After watching that we returned to the station by 1900hrs and was waiting for the train.

Was back home around 0900hrs, took some rest and was back to work for the Sunday afternoon session.