Tuesday 17th December ’24
Today was an early day; I woke up at around 4:30 a.m. to go to the Golden Temple. I’m not complaining though, as I’ve always wanted to see the Temple during sunrise and pray there. I showered, got dressed, and headed to the Temple with my mum, which was a 5-minute walk from the hotel. It was dark out and the first glimpse of the temple was beautiful. It was glimmering against the water of the Amrit Sarovar; what a sight to see.
We headed in and made our way to the line, which didn’t look that long from the outside. Oh, did I forget to mention that it was also bloody cold. We got to the line, and it was making very slow progress; we got to about a third of the way through in 30 minutes. When we were about halfway, the sunrise started, and that initiated the morning prayer, I guess. Everyone in the line started to sit on the floor to join the prayer, and we were there for another 30 minutes for the prayer. I wasn’t complaining, though, as I got to pray with the Sikhs during their morning prayer at the Golden Temple, which is a one-off experience. We finally got into the actual temple about 30 minutes later, and let me tell you, I was beautiful and worth the wait. I would highly recommend at least visiting here once in your life.
Once we were done, my mum and I decided to go do langar (community meal); now my feet at this point were frozen, it felt as if I was walking on rubber. The marble was very cold and the whole temple is surronded by marble but we still took pictures and headed to the langar. Langar is basically a free community meal available to everyone who visits a Gurudwara. The food was delicious, it was a vegetable curry, and I had some dal makhani and rice along with it. Now here’s where the story has a twist. So because I didn’t want to waste anything they had given us, I drank the water they had poured for us, both my mum’s and mine. As soon as I drank this water, I was finished.
I don’t know what happened, but my stomach started to hurt; I thought it wouldn’t last that long, so I firmed it and moved on to the next thing, which was visiting Jallianwala Baag. We walked there, and now I felt like puking. I thought I would, and as we entered the park, it got even worse. I thought I was going to throw up in there, but luckily, I didn’t. I actually wanted to explore this place as well because it is where the British massacred the local Punjabis during their occupation, but I was in no mood. We took a few pictures and headed straight for the exit and took a taxi home.
We got home, and I went to sleep for an hour; after I woke up, I felt a bit better, but my stomach was still hurting. I went to the toilet and found out I had diarrhoea. But the holiday must still go on, and I wanted to explore the city more, so next, my mum and I went to the partition museum, and it was a great visit. I learnt a lot about the events that led up to the partition of the Indian subcontinent and British colonisation and what happened after India gained Independence. I would highly recommend visiting here if your in Amritsar.
But my stomach was still hurting, and I just wanted to go home and shit. We exited the museum and tried to look for the rickshaw driver that had brought us to the museum, but he had disappeared:
ON A SIDE NOTE: so when we exited Jallianwala Baag, we found a rickshaw driver to take us back to the hotel, when we got back we made a deal with him to take us to the museum and then to the airport; we agreed on a price and then went to the museum an hour later. Once we got out the museum, this guy had completely disappeared, we tried calling him ten times from two different phones, but he wouldn’t pick up. Now, where he was parked, we saw the rickshaw driver that was taking us around yesterday. He said to take another one and was pushing us to take his friend’s one home and not wait for the current driver. Now, obviously, we ignored him and waited for a bit, but after he didn’t appear for another 10 minutes, we took a random rickshaw and went to the hotel. Bear in mind we haven’t paid the current rickshaw guy any money yet. Now what I think happened is the yesterday rickshaw driver saw us making a deal with a new guy and got a bit jealous and threatened him to fuck off so that he could take us back to the hotel. This is because of how much he was pushing us to take his friend’s one and was just standing there at the exact same place where we had parked outside the museum. Now, this is just speculation, of course.
Moving on, we went back to the hotel, had some food, and headed to the airport. At this point, my stomach was flaring up again, and I was in no mood to do anything. At the security line, there was no queue, and everyone was barging in. I got into a fight with this one guy who cut in front of me. We exchanged quite a few slurs at each other, and he went to the back of the line. Like I said, I was in no mood.
We got on the plane and headed to Delhi. We got to our hotel, which was five minutes from the airport, and I went straight to bed.
Well fuck being ill, I will see you guys tomorrow.