Intercity travel

Taking the bus

Today Kim and I left the rest of the family in Chandigarh while we went our separate way to Amritsar.  We woke around 0700 and had Mushtaq take us to the nearby bus station around 0845.  There weren’t any air-con buses available so we tried another station at sector 43.  Unfortunately there weren’t any air-con buses till 1730.

So, we didn’t have a choice and took the first available bus which was left immediately at 0930.  It was cramped with five-abreast seating.  We stopped about 1.5h out of town for drinks and we bought a delicious battered sandwich.

When we realised that we had taken the key of our guesthouse room, we made some frantic phone calls and TXTs for instructions to return it.

It felt like a long 5h30 ride in the hot cramped bus to Amritsar.  It broke the boredom when a local chatted me up.  He had worked in Malaysia for five years and speaks better Malay than mine.

Upon arrival we took an auto-rickshaw to our hotel.  But it turned out that the auto-rickshaw couldn’t enter the area and we had to transfer us to a manual rickshaw.

After a short rest, we went to the post office to try send the guesthouse key back to Chandigarh.  But it was closed due to day 2 of Eid.

Golden Temple

We continued to the Golden Temple, the most significant temple to Sikhs.  I had to wear something on my head in keeping with their requirements but Kim was OK with a cap.  We also had to wash our feet.

At around 1700, the light was just awesome.  There were many pilgrims in the area and a few in the central pond which also had a few carps.  We wandered around the complex but not into the shrine.

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Leaving the temple, we searched for dinner.  I love Indian Chinese food (ie. India’s interpretation of Chinese food) so we had a Vegetable Manchurian, plus a vegetable curry and rice.  And that was our day moving from Chandigarh to Amritsar.

Another minor observation for the day.  The Mentos sweets we bought today was from Bogor in Indonesia.  It is as good as the ones made in China which we had recently too.  But the ones made locally in India didn’t have the right texture.  We are such candy connoisseurs?