We arrive in Chandigarh early in the morning when it is still dark. It's quite nice to see a city wake up; it gets lighter, chai wallahs appear on the pavements, a huge number of photo labs on sector 22 open at 6.30 (why so early when everything else stays shut?). More and more rickshaw drivers who sleep on the pavements under the walkways in front of the shops, get up and roll up their bedding. Chandigarh is a planned city, only little more than 50 years old, it has the odd status of being the shared capital of Haryana and the Punjab and is simultaneously a Union territory. It's supposed to be clean and modern but with lots of broken paving stones, rubbish on the streets, mounds of earth, bricks and rubble along the pavements it has more a post apocalyptic than modern look to it. Less so at Sukhna lake, a huge artificial lake at the edge of town: it looks modern, it's clean, there are dust bins every 5 metres, swan shaped plastic paddle boats populate the lake. The "Modern Complex" serving food and drinks proves too modern for us though: non-smoking, even outside!

19/03/04 afternoon, the epitome of luxury

The best bus we've ever had in India runs from Chandigarh to Amritsar: AC (functioning), legroom twice as generous as on other deluxe buses, with adjustable leg cushions, working suspension, tread on the tyres. Okay, it's a video coach, the movie shown is inevitably the usual fare of bad guy in black with big moustache, good guy with gooey eyes, beautiful woman with a serious lack of brain, singing and dancing sequences in tight clothes with appropriate hip movements to serve as sex surrogate, a bit of shooting and so on. But the volume is turned to a normal level and not to an ear drum shattering racket, so it's bearable even easily ignorable as we drive in our cool luxury on an extremely good road through the Punjab. The bigger the shock when we get off in Amritsar near the GT road; our first impression of the town is quite unlike of what we expected. It stinks. Rubbish, rotten veg and flies everywhere.

20/03/04 Wagah - border to Pakistan

Amritsar is close to the Pakistani border, the reason for Chandigarh being the state capital and not Amritsar, which is morally really the main city of the Punjab. Wagah border is the only land border to Pakistan and every evening there is a ceremony of slamming the border gates shut. Soldiers or border guards march up and down the road and in front of the gates, making the weirdest contortions with their legs, either goose-stepping or quickly swinging their knee up to their noses and then stamping their heels loudly onto the ground. The concrete tribunes are full with spectators, some swinging Indian flags (though we see fewer than expected), obviously on the other side of the gate it's Pakistani flags which are swished around. Unfortunately the tribune we're sitting on is strategically so placed that we can't see all that much of the ceremony near the gate; it's too far away and there's a big tree in the way. Maybe good for all the vendors outside who sell VCDs and DVDs of leg swinging, Indian flags and crowds shouting "Hindustan zindabad".

21/03/04 mud around the Golden Temple

The Golden Temple in Amritsar, also called the Harmandir, is the most important gurudwara (Sikh temple) for the Sikhs. Building work of the temple was started by the 5th of the Sikh Gurus in 1589. We've seen so many beautiful pictures of it, big panoramic photographs of the Golden Temple lit at night, golden domes and white clock tower building reflecting in the glittering water of the rectangular pool (called sarovar). From a tourist point of view the reflection in the water makes the Harmandir as impressive and beautiful as it comes. We had read something about new water treatment plant and water tank cleaning in the newspaper before we arrived but kind of ignored it. Ah well, when we arrive, the sarovar is drained of water and so the gold plated Harmandir is surrounded by a pool of mud. The last time the water tank was cleaned happened about 20 years ago, after the notorious "Operation Blue Star". We chose the right timing for our visit - or didn't we? See big picture in photo blog.

22/03/04 spies in Amritsar

At the edge of the Circular Road which encloses the old part of Amritsar we see the Fort Gobind Garh on our Lonely Planet map. So why not and go and have a look at it. The Fort is at Vijay Chowk, a junction with a small middle circle on which is the proud display of an old tank. Behind on the other side of the road where the Fort is supposed to be are some guards, a gate and a sign proclaiming "Fighting Fifth"; so it's now used as a military base, we can't see anything of an Old Fort. As I get my camera out, to take a snap of the small tank, one of the guards comes over and commands: "No photos!". It's a Pakistani tank captured in 1971 with a shell hole ripped into the front - good shot! But why no photos? Even if we were Pakistani spies, I can't imagine the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence - the Pakistani intelligence service) being even in the least interested in a small rickety decades old tank - their own - decorating the middle of a small roundabout about in Amritsar.

23/03/04 Amritsari bread - the kulcha

Around the Golden Temple are the narrow winding streets of the Old City; the cosy bazaar lanes are as clean as the area around GT road is filthy and smelly. Some of the buildings look old and are beautiful with their trellised wooden and metal balconies. Tandoori chicken and naan bread are not as common as we thought it would be here, but kulcha is. A kulcha is a chapati shaped flat bread made of "maida" flour, a bit more fluffy than a chapati, often stuffed with potato. We pass a bakery producing heaps of these kulchas. A big clay oven with an open fire in it; 2 or 3 workers shovelling metal trays with raw/baked kulchas in and out. Mr Thakur, the owner, inherited this business from his father. He estimates that he produces about 1,500 to 2,000 kulchas per day, they are sold by the dozen for 1 Rs a piece. He is extremely friendly to us, lets us take pictures and presents us with loads of hot kulchas, which are dead delicious fresh out of the oven.

24/03/04 Maharaja Ranjit Singh's summer palace

The biggest park in Amritsar is Ram Bagh, situated in the newer part of town. It's not as well maintained as Delhi parks are and looks a bit scruffy in places. But it's pleasant enough to sit around, read a book and get stared at. In the middle of it is Maharaja Ranjit Singh's summer palace (which doesn't look very palace-like), now converted to a museum. Inside we are pleasantly surprised to find lots of boards with useful and comprehensible information in perfect English (usually not a big feature of Indian museums or monuments). A bit of history about the Sikhs, a few maps of the Punjab at different times, a big display of Maharaja Singh's court, a painting of the Golden Temple in earlier times, a replica of the Koh-e-Noor etc. We are the only visitors in there, a guard walks behind us to switch lights on as we are looking at a showpiece and off when we go to the next one. Presumably a measure to cut down on the electricity bill.

25/03/04 kar sewa - muddy people

The streets of Amritsar are crowded with muddy people! The closer we get to the Golden Temple the more there are. It's the first day of the "kar sewa", literally meaning "do service", the first day of hundreds of thousands of volunteers clearing the mud on the ground of the sarovar (water tank within the Golden Temple compound). The holy mud is cleared by hand, no machines are used, lines of thousands of people carry mud in wok shaped pans (called "batta") on their heads outside the Golden Temple to several disposal points. Sikhs have come from all over the world to participate in this holy service. Office workers and farmers, the poor, the rich, it doesn't matter, they all work together, many singing or humming hymns as they walk along, most more than happy to have their picture taken. It's a breathtaking sight from a balcony on the first floor, overlooking lakhs (100,000) of workers within the muddy water tank and the usually white but now brown-grey marble walkway. We are more than happy now to have forfeited the sight of the Golden Temple reflecting in the water around it, and to see a piece of history in the making. See big picture in photo blog.

29/03/04 Hero bicycle factory in Ludhiana

Ludhiana is a big manufacturing centre in the Punjab, in particular for textiles. It is also the seat for the Hero bicycle factory, which made it into the Guinness book of records for its massive output; up to 19,000 bicycles daily can be produced here, of which 4,000 are destined for the export market. Neither of us have ever been inside a bicycle factory before and we are dead chuffed that we get a guided tour round the site with its many different stages of manufacture. The factory is clean and modern, most processes are automated, for example the robotic welding, the electro static painting, the moulding and curing of saddles, drilling and stamping of metal parts etc etc. It was fascinating to see the manufacture of the bicycle so ubiquitous on Indian roads. We would like to thank the management and in particular Mr S. Dhiman, who showed us around, to let us have a look. It was a brilliant experience. An article is to follow shortly.

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