Overwhelm in Amritsar

India has their own charming Old Spice guy. He offers tea.

Indian McDonalds serves McAloo Tikka and McSpicy Paneer for all the vegetarians.

The last few days have been intense experiences. I am in Amritsar, a stronghold of Sikhism. The Golden Temple is the place where all Sikhs want to visit before they die. I went there last night and again this morning. Last night I was there for the ritual to put the Holy Book of Sikhism to bed and this morning I was there to tour the whole complex. Sikhism is about taking care of all the people of the world and, in addition to one of the most beautiful temples in the world, they have an amazing community of volunteers and donors providing free food and lodging. It was moving seeng how people come together to provide vast amounts of food for pilgrims of any faith. They provide meals for 50,000 - 200,000 people per day and more on holidays. I also love the belief in equality that is at the heart of Sikhism.

Sikhs in general are pretty cool. The men look distinguished in their turbans and tend to smell nice, although the beard tamers can look funny. They believe in the equality of all people, including women, which is unusual in Indian society. To minimize differences, all men are named Singh and all women are Kaur. You can see the differences in the whole city. Sikhs are famous for being clean and Amritsar is much cleaner than Delhi or Agra. They still burn their garbage to give everyone respiratory problems, tho. Our guide was a serious hottie and was all flirty until he found out I was a dozen years older than he. Too bad.

We also smushed in a trip to Jallianwala Bagh, the site of a 1919 massacre of unarmed Indians by the English and to a totally over the top Hindu temple. Jallianwala Bagh was disquieting, but the temple, wow. Imagine a combination amusement park hall of mirrors, museum, creepy disco palace. It was stuffed to the tits with idols of various gods from different states and at different eras surrounded by disco mirrors. You have to walk through lion and snake mouths, slither over a mound on your belly to walk through a trough of water and crawl through tunnels on your hands and knees while being watched by some interestingly visaged god representations. It was truly beyond description.

Every night the Waga Indian-Pakistan border crossing has a ritual that is part Bollywood, part Monty Python. As you may know, India and Pakistan haven't been the friendliest since partition but the people around this border want to maintain friendly relationships so they created a friendship ritual for the end of day. It starts with the Indian women Bollywood dancing in the street (so many people took photos of us dancing i'm sure we're on Indian YouTube or Facebook). Pakistani women aren't allowed to dance so I don't know what they did on their side. Then the soldiers, minimum 6 feet tall plus under 2 foot tall fan hats, do some march dances that involve kicking their legs over their heads before shaking hands with the Pakistani soldiers and lowering the flags simultaneously. The crowds on either side try to outscream one another and there are cheerleaders. Our cheer was "Hindustan zindabad!" It's crazy and infectious and one of the best things I have ever seen.

This place is awesome.