Monday 16th December ’24
Today was a very early start. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to prepare for the flight to Amritsar. It was pretty uneventful the whole way to Amritsar, as I was sleeping for most of it—oh, but we did get the extra legroom seats by coincidence, so big up to the lady who checked our bags.
Once we got to Amritsar, we hired a taxi and made our way to the hotel, now hear me out, the hotel’s called Heaven View, so I thought it was going to be some fucking fancy hotel but to actually get to the hotel we had to switch the car for a rickshaw. It took half an hour to go 1km due to how narrow the roads were, and some retards were bringing tractors down it blocking the whole way. On the way, we passed this extremely nice-looking hotel, and I thought this was the one but lucky me, I got fucking blue balled, and what actually appeared was a hotel that looked more like a motel. But i’m not going to complain, it was pretty clean and a literal 1 minute walk to the golden temple which is pretty convenient.
After getting refreshed, we headed for lunch (it took us 30 minutes to go 1km again). We had some kulchas for lunch, and let me tell you, they were fucking banging, we had a total of 7 kulchas between everyone, and we were stuffed. We then made our way to Wagah Border to watch the closing ceremony. It was pretty cool; we got to see the full-blown patriotism of the Indian crowds and the seemingly lackluster performance from the Pakistani side, but I guess they might have been out of view for me. It was a fun ceremony, and I’m glad I got to see it.
We then made our way to the Vaishnodevi mandir, and I think that this temple was made for midgets. The ceiling was fucking 2 feet tall, and I think I had back pain from walking around in the labyrinth that was this temple. But it was pretty cool, and they had depictions of the different Hindu stories hidden around the labyrinth. The Ramayan one was especially cool, and I really liked the designs of the murtis; it was nice to see something else from the ordinary.
Once we were done with the temple, we got some spices to take back to London and then headed for some food. I had Sarson Ka Saag and Makki ki roti. It was pretty banging, but I already felt rough eating so many kulchas earlier in the day.
Anyways, it was a good day today. I do need to wake up early tomorrow to go to the Golden Temple, so I will see you tomorrow.