Amritsar
- 16th to 17th October 2021
On reading somewhere that the Wagah borders had reopened for the Beating Retreat Ceremony held every evening, travel plans to Srinagar via Delhi were redrafted to include a hop at Amritsar to witness this and also visit the Golden Temple.
Table of Contents
The ideal months to visit Amritsar
The months between October to March are ideal for landing up here. While it would be pleasant and sunny during the day, the nights could become very cold especially during December and January.
July to September is when the weather remains moderate but one could get inconvenienced with the occasional heavy shower. Avoid the moths of April to June as it becomes pretty hot during this time.
How did we reach
Amritsar has an International Airport and is well connected to most metro cities across India. Apart from the long distance trains passing through Amritsar, there are over 10 trains plying from Delhi and with journey times varying between 5.30 hours to around 8 hours.
We took the early morning Shatabdi Express from New Delhi to Amritsar. The train passes through a few of the major cities of Punjab like Ludhiana and Jallandhar and rolls into Amritsar by around 1.30 in the afternoon.
Call it a real stroke of bad luck coz we suddenly realized after exiting the station premises that there were literally no modes of transport available to our hotel. We had chosen to stay in close proximity to the Golden Temple for ease of visiting even if need be, at odd hours.
After around half an hour of trying the Olas & Ubers of the world and speaking to a few private cab operators in parallel, we were given to understand that the area around the Golden temple had been cordoned off on account of the visit of some VIPs (ministers).
Finally after attempts at hauling autos, cabs, rickshaws etc, and while nobody seemed to be interested in venturing in that direction, a good Samaritan in the form of an e-Rickshaw driver volunteered to drop us within a couple of 100 metres of the hotel vicinity through a different approach.
With all our luggage and with some of it delicately balanced atop the e-rickshaw, we meandered our way literally through the Patli Galis (narrow streets) and after multiple bumpy encounters reached Hotel Sapphire.
Plenty of hotels to chose from
Amritsar has a wide variety of hotels to chose from depending on your budgets. Applying the same rationale as narrowing down on hotels with good reviews, proximity to the sightseeing spots and above alll, neat and clean linen and washrooms, we chose to book ourselves at Hotel Sapphire which was at a stone’s throw from the Golden Temple. Did not have too much of time to plan nor was there too much of a choice left for us as Amritsar got added to our plans at the last minute. One could also look at The Comfort Inn Alstonia, Treehouse London Street, The Landmark, Golden Lagoon, Shivaay Grand, Regenta Place, Fairfield by Marriott, Country Inn Hall of Heritage, Fortune Inn Heritage Walk etc.
Amritsari Trivia
The City of Amritsar (meaning pool of nectar) was founded in 1577 by the 4th Guru of the Sikhs Guru Ram Das Sahib on a site supposed to have been granted by King Akbar. The temple and the pool around was conceptualized and built between 1577 to 1604 by the 5th Guru of the Sikhs Guru Arjan Singh while Maharaj Ranjit Singh who reigned between the first half of the 19th century helped in covering the upper part of the temple by adding gold foils estimated to be weighing 750 Kgs over the copper dome.The City of Amritsar is home to the iconic Golden Temple, the most revered and holiest shrine of the Sikhs.
A vibrant cultural and commercial center, Amritsar is just about 30 kms away from the Pakistan borders.
The last outpost which is at Wagah is a small village housing an army contingent and this place comes alive every evening with the conduct of the Beating Retreat ceremony.
On display are loads of patriotic fervour which does send goosebumps.
The city also has a lovely memorial known as the Jallianwala Bagh built in memory of those wounded and killed on account of some indiscriminate firing by the British soldiers during the 1919 massacre.
If time permits, one can also visit the Partition Museum, the Vaishno Devi Mata and Durgiana Temples.
The Wagah Border
Fortunately the formalities of checking people were done pretty fast and we found our way up, climbing a long flight of stairs to reach the upper storeys and with the hope that we could get a better view of the proceedings.
The din took over as soon as we found a platform where we could stand and view the proceedings inspite of being jostled every now and then.
Crowds were reverberating with shouts of Mera Bharat Mahaan (My India is great) and Vande Mataram and it was goosebumps literally all the way.
A BSF army officer nominated as the Master of Ceremonies was at his best, doing it in his inimitable style, running around and egging people on, making people clap, shout and it was all about every individual displaying one’s patriotic fervour.
The other side of the gate had our friends from the border doing the same and while the smartly attired soldiers marched on from one end of the descent of stairs to the gate and back, the noise kept reaching crescendos.
We left our hotel at 3.15 in the afternoon towards Wagah. Traffic looked to be all over the place and things were almost at a standstill. We were crawling literally till some semblance of clearer roads came and it was then that the driving skills of our young Punjabi driver came to the fore.
He zipped past vehicles, overtaking them from all directions as if he was on a Formula One lane and managed to drop us around 500 metres before the security cordoned barricades by 4.15 PM from where it was to be a walk to join the long queue of people waiting.
All this until the sun was setting and then the flags of the respective countries were downed and carried back with all due respect. An amazing once in a lifetime experience of military camaraderie and showmanship which I guess every Indian should witness.
We reached the city back at around 7.30 in the evening and realized that in our anxiety to witness the Wagah show we had given the lunch a miss and with the early morning breakfast not holding on for long, we were starved.
At the roundabout where we got dropped after our trip to Wagah was this beautifully lit statue of Maharajah Ranjit Singh astride his horse.
Bade Bhai's Dhaba for dinner
In the close vicinity of the Golden Temple are lot of lovely outlets like the Kesar ka Dhaba, Bhai Kulwant Singh Kulchan Wale and multiple variants of the Brother’s Dhaba, serving authentic and great Amritsari food. We picked on Bade Bhai ka Brother’s Dhaba for dinner, more from an experience of having dined here before during my earlier visit to Amritsar around 10 years back. A gut feel that they would not compromise on the standard of food and they did not let us down.
Tucked into the famous Amritsari Kulche, dripping with butter along with Chole and had loads of Paneer as an additional accompaniment, topped by the famed Punjabi lassi coz no meal gets complete in Punjab without it. Having done due justice to our stomachs, off we headed for the Golden temple.
The Golden Temple
It was around 9.30 in the night and after tying the scarves around our head, we made our way into the Temple complex. Contrary to what we thought, crowds kept surging in even at that hour and the causeway built across the sacred pool and leading to the entrance of the sanctum sanctorum where the Guru Granth Sahib or the Holy Book of the Sikhs (also believed to be the last Guru) is kept, was choc-a-bloc with people.
The scripture is rested on a cushion in the evening while it is returned to the sanctum in the morning and a random page is opened which becomes the basis for the day’s prayers. There is a Langar Seva held at the temple kitchen every day where all visitors, irrespective of their status in terms of richness, caste, creed or religion are seated on the floor and served a free meal. Its estimated that over a lakh of pilgrims are fed every day.
Breakfast @ Bhai Kulwant Singh Kulchan Wale
We returned back to our hotel rooms pretty late and after having packed our bags, set off for breakfast the next morning by around 8 AM to Bhai Kulwant Singh Kulchan Wale where you get a variety of kulchas to choose from.
Kulchas are a variant of the Indian flatbread and while they are made softer, they usually come stuffed with mixed veggies or paneer or onions or cauliflower. A quick photo shoot of the Golden Temple was done before the breakfast.
This shop is located on the Heritage street close to the temple and the unique feature of this street is that all shops housed here have a similar frontage in terms of the name boards.
We had some time on our hand before the Jallianwala Bagh located close to the temple opened for visitors at 10.00 AM and that gave the ladies some time to indulge in a bit of shopping around the street.
The Jallianwala Bagh
The city of Amritsar was annexed to British India in 1849 and got etched in the annals of history in 1919 on the 13th of April when General Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on a crowd of unarmed Indian protestors who had gathered in a park with a large walled enclosure to voice their opinion on the way the Britishers were exercising their powers of combating subversive activities.
Several hundreds of people including holiday revellers who had gathered for the auspicious occasion of Baisakhi (Punjabi New year) were injured and many lost their lives when they jumped into an open well from where they were fired at from top. A memorial stands erected in memory of over 379 people who died on account of the police firing which also left over 1200 people wounded. Visitors are allowed free inside this memorial.
It took us almost 45 minutes to go through the memorial complex and with time being a constraint, we had to give the Partition Museum and the temples of Mata di and Durgiana a miss though I had visited these temples during my last visit.
We set off for the hotel and checked out by around 11.15 AM to leave for the Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport, located 11 kms outside the city of Amritsar for our onward journey to the Paradise on Earth – Kashmir. You can read more about it on Kashmir .