Amritsar, first impressions

Here are some views of the famed Golden Temple in Amritsar. It really is stunning. I just went for a first visit on Saturday, as I'm sure i'll have many more trips there. It was particularly crowded, i think, because it was a weekend and a national holiday, so everybody was off work. Anyway, the marble and the gold, in the sunlight, combine to this really blinding effect. You feel a little like you're on the surface of the moon in this distant palace - i'm sure even more so when not getting jostled. Obviously, these pictures don't convey the sound, which is unique. Vast spaces, pilgrims walking and talking in hushed tones, a ragi singing gurmat sangeet (the music i'll be studying) over a loudspeaker.
It's a great social institution as well, of course. Free meals for upwards of 50,000 people a day, dormitory rooms... it's also the cleanest place i've been in India so far, because pilgrims come to do their sewa (volunteer duty) by sweeping, squeegeeing, and all that.
This is a Punjabi sweet shop (two sticky thumbs up!). I can't really tell what's in any of the things, though there's a lot of sort-of sweetened milk, coconut, even some lentils mixed with sugar. This could be dangerous. This particular counter was outside a neighborhood Hindu temple. Really fun, actually. As you enter the temple, they route you up the stairs through this jungle-gym obstacle course of different altars for many gods. It's all done in this gaudy reflective metal mosaics with lights flashing. You have to crawl under tables, ring bells, crawl through water, duck through a cave to get your Bindi painted in orange paste. It was far out, but really enjoyable.

Then, in the evening, just as I was feeling little down = realizing i'm in for a long-haul, and i'm still adjusting (gastrically and emotionally) to being here - there was a knock at my hotel, and a nice young Punjabi gentleman was inviting me to go to a theatre festival. Well, it wasn't out of the blue - actually he was a contact from my friend in Boston, and I think i'll be renting out a guest room in his house while I'm in town. But it was unexpected to me. So new thing I knew I was flying through traffic (ugh, a subject for another post) on the back of his motorbike, then sitting in a darkened theatre watching a Punjabi folk play.

It remains quite cold here - and i have to explain that relative to the US. I always scoffed when I got here and read about the 'cold snap', all this when it was still above zero centigrade. However, after a few nights in a culture where buildings are not insulated, and the power to the space heater fluctuates in and out, I can agree with the locals that it'll be good when this cold snap ends. Though I'd still prefer this to their 50 degrees centigrade weather in June.