NB: All our additional information on driving, rubbish, and just general advice ending up being too much for the RU-vid description so we'll do a seperate post to our website about it and let you all know when it's live.
Anyway back to the normal proceedings!
Our last stop in India! We set up camp at a guest house in Amritsar for a few days to do a bit of maintenance on the car and see the local sights before crossing the border to Pakistan!
In the centre of Amritsar is Harmandar Sahib, otherwise known as the Golden Temple. A very fitting name considering the whole temple is covered in gold! The temple is the preeminent pilgrimage site of the Sikh religion with over 100,000 people visiting the temple daily for worship but also to eat and sleep.
The Temple has had a pretty tumultuous past first being built in 1577 then numerous times up until 1984 due to Muslim, Mughal and British invasion and subsequent conflict and demolition.
Inside the temple is the scripture of Sikhism which is treated as a living person, a Guru, out of respect. Each night during elaborate ceremonies the Guru is carried to it’s bedroom and tucked into bed for 4 before returning in the morning, opened to a random page and read out for the pilgrims to follow that day.
If you’re coming to this part of India one thing that you cannot miss is experiencing the Wagah Border closing ceremony. Since the partition between India and Pakistan in 1947, almost every day (political situation pending), the Indian border security force, otherwise known as BSF has competitively marched off against the opposing Pakistani Rangers.
The border itself is open daily between 10 and 4, though the gates remain closed and are only opened when people need to cross and during the ceremony. On each side of the border is a stadium for spectators to watch the event. On the Indian side the grandstand can hold around 20 thousand very patriotic people and with the close proximity of the stands has the feel and energy of a major sporting event. Apart from the colours both the BSF and Rangers wear similar dress and proceed to carry out their seemingly aggressive march against each other which consists of some very choreographed and coordinated goose steps and ground stomps. This dance-off proceeds for about an hour before each side lowers their flags and the gates are re-closed.
When we drove through it was around 1pm and it was a huge contrast to see the arena empty and silent. The border crossing itself was fairly straight forward, first we went through immigration, then customs where they fill out the carnet and do a quick search of the car.
We thought that before leaving India we should do a bit of a wrap up of the country and give our honest perspective about driving and camping in India for anyone else considering travelling in a similar way to India. It involved a lot more planning and also mental strength (especially when driving) compared to any other country we’ve been to though we felt it was 100% worth it if you’re able to adapt!
So that’s it from INDIA!! Thanks for having us and to all the amazing people we met here thank you for inviting us into your homes and treating us like family.
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26 авг 2024
