For starters, Amritsar is located on the north-western border of India, in Punjab. Ataari(nearly a half an hour ride from the main city of Amritsar) shares its geographical borders with the Pakistani city of Lahore.
We visited this unique Indian city from 16th-17th July, 2008.
Amritsari Guideline # 1: Do not visit Amritsar during the months of May, June or July, it’s extremely hot, the sun tends to play a hide and seek game with the rains, and so the weather is either extremely sultry or hot enough to bake you…
Our train was nearly 3 hours late and so instead of 22:25 PM on the 15th, we started off at 01:27 AM on the 16th. This was the Jallianwala Bagh Express from Tatanagar to Amritsar.
By 1:50 AM, though unable to sleep on my top berth I had gotten used to the train shaking, and was hoping I wouldn’t fall off the berth, in a poor attempt to gather some of the light from the aisles as I tried to jot some things down in my diary…
By 2:07 AM I had discovered that I was behaving
a) like a five year old who had just spotted a cool bug in her garden.
b) a foreign tourist delightfully trying her best to witness the ‘Real India’ with absolutely all the strings attached(this because I was trying to take a photograph of some people asleep near the tracks, like that’s a new sight in India :|).
So, after that I did sleep through I guess, because I next remember waking up at 7:30 and reaching the Amritsar Railway Station at 8:00.
Amritsari Mythology: ‘Amrit’ means the Nectar of Immortality or simply put, the Holy Nectar and ‘Sar'(short for Sarovar) means Lake. So the Lake of the Holy Nectar is believed to have received its name from an instance in Hindu Mythology. After the Sagar Manthan between the Devtas(gods) and the Asurs(demons), it is believed that the former refused to share the nectar with the latter, and it was Garuda, who was called on to deliver the nectar to the Asurs in Paataal. During Garuda’s journey it is believed he took a stop at Amritsar, laid the nectar there, and hence the name “Amritsar”.
to be continued… 🙂
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