Amritsar

We woke up at about 6AM to give ourselves enough time to get ready, pack up and make it to the train station in time. The next six-ish hours were spent listening to iPods, doing sudoku puzzles, playing Uno, and wishing I could steal the iPad from the rich little Indian boy sitting behind us. Once we got off the train in Amritsar I was immediately reminded yet again of my absolute least favorite part of traveling outside of the US - the insane amounts of people in your face asking for money, if you need a taxi, where you are staying. if you need a hotel, etc etc. For the inexperienced traveler it can be enough to make you want to turn around get right back on the train, and surely give you an anxiety attack. I'm not saying I'm a super experienced traveler or anything, but because of the previous travels I do have under my belt plus the reading of friends travel blogs and the type of books I usually read, I am well aware and prepared for it. You learn quickly the best way to deal with it- pretend you are deaf, maybe even blind and if needed dumb. Some of the people can prove to be quite useful at times though. We made our way through the sea of annoying people and found a nice cheap hotel to set our bags down before heading out in search of an ATM. Once my rupee fund was replenished we found a nice place to eat- a somewhat hidden little outdoor restaurant in the middle of a hotel. This became our own little tranquil hang out/eating area for the next day and a half. After a nice lunch we set out to wander around the garbage filled streets of Amritsar exploring shops, riding a tricycle carriage thing (no idea what their real name is) and getting ice cream before heading back our room to lay down and cool off for a bit. Around seven we took a rickshaw to the Golden Temple, which was one of my main must see Indian sites. We bought bandannas to cover our heads, took our shoes off, rinsed our feet and headed into the area which encloses the temple to take a seat on the floor in perfect view of the temple. (any place is a perfect view really, considering the temple is by itself in the middle of a, I'm assuming, man made little body of water. The temple was so incredibly gorgeous at night so we just sat there enjoying the view and making friends for about an hour or two. We got up to take a walk around and get pictures from all sides. It was actually Ghandi's birthday so there were tons and tons of people everywhere, some stripping down to their underwear to take a dip in the water, others bowing in various locations around the place. We left to get sodas before taking another death defying rickshaw ride back to our hotel. Seriously, I will never understand how there are not more accidents here what with the basically non existent traffic organization. I still can't decide if there is more honking here or in Egypt. It's at least the same- non stop.

The next morning we headed to our favorite restaurant to eat breakfast and figure out how to spend the rest of the day until our 6PM train ride to Jaipur. What basically happened was a lot of wandering around looking in more shops, buying bangles, strolling through various street markets, sweating to death and taking rickshaw rides. I'm really going to miss rickshaw rides, they are like nothing else. We ate lunch in a 4th floor restaurant in some hotel we found before heading back to check if our bags were still safely stored in the lobby of our the hotel our little hang out spot was located at. The nice reception boy had offered to watch our bags all day for free. He was rad. We still had an hour or so before our train so we settled in our spot, ordered some naan and beer (the latter obviously not for me. I'm always the token sober Mormon girl, and very glad to be) and played a few rounds of Uno.