Day 19: Amritsar, India
by Oliver Smith
Of all the feelings you get from your first day in India, one in particular is, I think, very precious and rare. It’s a bit like the feeling you have on the first day of school – and similar to the weird, slightly weightless one when you first ride a bike. It’s the sensation of having absolutely no idea what the hell is going on.
For instance, why is my autorickshaw driver driving the wrong way down a one-way street with his body weight balanced on the horn? How does the dress of an entire nation manage to appear so perfectly colour-coordinated without all 1.2 billion of them calling each other up in advance? How do you wrap up a four-foot wide turban? And why did a man just approach me, introduce himself and kindly ask for the address of ‘J.K. Rowling, Esquire?’
All these things have answers. Cleary there is a lot to understand about India. Drop most Lonely Planet guidebooks on the floor and you get a gentle ‘thwip’ noise at best. Drop the India guidebook on the floor and you get a serious THWACK. It has well over a thousand pages. It won’t bounce. It will hold open doors.
I lost my India virginity in Amritsar today. It felt like being put on a spin cycle of awe, horror, happiness and bewilderment and back to awe again. We saw buildings of incomparable splendour next to scenes of desperate poverty. The suckerpunch stink of sewage alternated with the intoxicating scent of spices. There was the horror of stepping in an innocent-looking puddle and watching my leg swallowed whole by murky water. And there was the elation of sitting in the Golden Temple – Sikhism’s holiest place – and hearing hymns echoing serenely about its marble walls and forgetting entirely about my soggy trousers.
By the end of the day, I wanted to slam my hotel room door on all this chaos and the scolding heat, and stick my head in the fridge while breathing deeply and counting to 10. But by the time I’d reached 10, I wanted to get outside and do it all over again. I think this is what happens on your first day in India.
The day in statistics:
- Chapatis: 2
- Rickshaw-related brushes with death: 1
- Biggest turban spotted (diameter): 4 foot
