So where've you been? 33 Amritsar, the Punjab

Amritsar is one of those Great Places. Like Varanasi, a holy city; the birthplace of the Sikh religion.



I could tell you about bathing in the Amrit Sarovar (pool of holy nectar), at the Golden Temple - in itself a wonder, in India, one pool for all castes?
Or the fat koi that play around you as you bathe fully clothed.
Or the spicy namkin nibbles I gorged on every day.
Or how beautifully my tried and tested Losing Yourself technique succeeded - of getting a rickshaw as far as I can make the guy pedal (anywhere as long as it's out of the city), then trying to find my way without a map back again.
Or the fat black puy lentils that form a punjabi dal, or the butter covered spiral shape that transforms a lowly paratha into a slice of heaven.



But I think my abiding memory of the Punjab will be of the Pakistan border at Attari / Wagah. Around one thousand indians, and me, squashed onto terraces.

(and I read about this ceremony later, in a Palin travelogue, and he laments the lack of chairs, says they had to make the best they could without chairs, and feel worried that not only did I not notice the lack of chairs as I squatted on haunches with everyone else, but it didn't even cross my mind that there ever could be chairs. There may be some adjustments to coming home from ten months in Asia)

It's scorching 46 degree heat (that's something like 115 fahrenheit, I think), and my clothes are soaked with sweat. Not liberally dampened - actually soaked. There is one dry spot, somewhere around my ankles, otherwise it looks like I've been swimming. When the crowd thins, I notice a circle of spatter marks around me, where I've actually been gushing liquid. From such perspiration rich ampules as chin, elbows, knees.
I had a fan, but offered it to a family from Nepal, who promptly invite me to their home in Sunauli. Having avoided Sunauli once this year already, I politely decline.

It's the sort of press of people I've only seen before at an Edinburgh Hogmanay.
Border guards are over six feet high (in a country of three footers), with excessively poncey uniforms: white gaiters, red fans on tall black hats - all adding about ten inches and the look of those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park that learn in the third reel to operate machine guns. When they march, polished toes clip up to nose height.
And a man whips the crowd up into a jingoistic frenzy. Men race up and down with the Indian flag, cheered on by fat uncles dancing the dance of tubby indian men at weddings everywhere, the seductive rhythmic shoulder shrug of 'I-don't-care'.
The man yells into a microphone. And a thousand people next to me scream. Hindustan!
Hindustan. Hindustan.

Across the barbed wire and gate, the same ceremony happens in a different country. Two flags are lowered with competitive theatrical glares as gates are thrown contemptuously shut on the only land border crossing between India and Pakistan.
Hindustan. Hindustan. A roar. A delighted roar.

Above us an eagle circles, looking for prey in the rice fields.