"New, strange, uncharacteristic experience, coming at the needed moment, is sometimes as necessary in a person's life as a plow in a field." -Katharine Butler Hathaway
Where do you go after four days of wedding ritual? Why, to Amritsar, of course! Site of the Golden Temple. Most of our group had never been there, and everyone was excited. We climbed into our friendly bus for what we thought was a three hour tour. A three hour tour that took six hours just to go one way.
The rickshaws in the Punjab area were so wonderfully individual.See how small they are? This will be an important fact to remember toward the end of this blog post.
I love the Punjabi trucks. So much color and different designs, but all saying "Blow Horn" on the back. This is partly to provide the truck driver with notification that you might be passing him, but also it serves to wake them up on those long lonely drives through the countryside (or so I was told).
Finally we stop. It's still daylight (barely), and I think we've arrived in Amritsar, but no. It's lunch time at Kulcha Land just outside of Amritsar. Kulcha (and especially the Kulcha here) is one of the most delicious snacks we had on our trip. It's a stuffed thin bread, served with beans that were kind of salsa-like. I'm still dreaming about that meal.
I looked over to see Rochi sitting in a buggy, motioning for us to join her. There are 60 people in our group and not a lot of buggies. We hop onto the buggy as if it were our only hope of survival.
As we pull out, we wonder how the rest of the group will get there. But we trot off, still clueless. Grateful to be wedged in next to someone who speaks Punjabi.
It was dark when we arrived at the Temple gates. Apparently the Chief of Police had been waiting for us since 2 pm. He wanted to greet our group. We left our shoes by the gate and those that didn't have head coverings were given bandanas.
After walking through a shallow pool of water to cleanse our feet, this is our first view of the Golden Temple. Yes, it's covered in actual gold. It is the holiest of holiest places for the Sikhs, and it's about as lovely a holy place as you could imagine. The reflections, the chanting broadcast on loud speakers, the countless turbans... Everyone was in awe.
The temple was completed in 1604 and has been under attack several times since. There are still bullet holes from the siege in the late 1980's when extremist Sikhs were hold up there while being shot at by National Guard commandos. That was the incident which eventually resulted in Indira Ghandi being assassinated. The Temple has four doors which symbolizes that people from all religions are welcome to come and worship there. Hard to imagine anything bad happening here.
Below is a two minute video of our walk up the pathway to the Temple. Halfway there we were told we had to sit and wait for the chanting to end. Then we got up and moved forward with the music, until a Sikh man told me I couldn't videotape anymore.
We walked through the Temple, tried to avoid being sprinkled with too much holy water since even if it was holy, we weren't sure how clean it was. We kneeled in prayer with other worshippers, some of whom were in tears. We watched the man who waved the large white feather duster over the men who were chanting. And we watched the man who stuffed all the donation money into the collection box. There is a Golden Temple channel on tv which shows the whole thing 24/7.
Okay, this is where we thought it couldn't get any more interesting. But we were wrong. This is the point at which we realize that we needed to get back to the bus, and then remembered that we'd arrived at the Temple in horse-drawn buggies. And we had no idea where we'd left the bus. So we climbed into the first rickshaw we saw. At one point there were FOURTEEN of us in one rickshaw, but fortunately for us and for the rickshaw, two left (one an infant), leaving TWELVE of us. Keep in mind that in Mumbai, only THREE people are all that are allowed in one rickshaw. I took this photo before the full horror of the ride overcame me. You can see how we had to not only hold on for our lives, but also cover our faces for all the fumes and dust. Once the truly frightening part of the drive was over, Rob was able to take a short video of the not-so-scary part.
This black box below doesn't look like much but actually it's the video Rob took once he was able to peel his fingers off the rickshaw frame. It was taken looking back through the small back window. We didn't dare look forward. Click on it. It's short. It's way better than having to endure that ride.
Then the weary group of 60 men, women, and children piled back on to our now familiar bus to head back to Ludhiana. It had taken us six hours to drive to Amritsar. When I got home, I google-mapped the distance between the two cities. It worked out to 87 miles. Six hours to travel 87 miles.
At one point, someone had said she was disappointed because the original plan was to make a stop at the Pakistani border to watch the changing of the guards. Rob and I weren't disappointed at all. We'd had enough excitement for one day...
If you look at the map below, you'll see that the two cities are indeed not far from each other and just a hair's breath from Pakistan. And only several hundred miles from Kabul. I'm glad we were clueless. Yet again, India has caught us off-guard. Delivering way more than we ever dreamed...
Yes, I'm still thinking about Christmas. Rob and I were trying to figure out what it was that made this Christmas so memorable, even with most of our family out of town. And we decided it was partly because we somehow managed to worm our way into three family dinners with other people's families. One was with church family, one with the family of family, and one with the family of friends who we think of as family. And all that was followed by a breakfast with Tom, Jenny, Andy, and Nancy at a restaurant where my dad used to be a regular. The following photos were taken after breakfast at the "White House" in Laguna, where in honor of dad, we dined on his favorite - "crisp-but-not-burned bacon."
Last year I took photos of the presents I received, mostly because of the thoughtfulness behind each one. So I decided to do it again this year. Fortunately both Rob and I were given Wacom tablets to hook up to our computers so I used mine to practice scribbling notes all over my photos.
Rob gave me four thermometers to add to my collection. The first one is from a West Virginia funeral home, complete with a questionable ambulance service!
And last but not least is the S. Loewith & Company Insurance Realtors thermometer, which came with a complete set of all the month, day, and date cards.
And, last but definitely not least, two very special tiles designed by Claire with two of the most special sayings of her very special grandpa. This was the first time I've teared up when looking at tile. Orders will be taken...
So I said to Rob, let's have some orange juice. Could you go get some oranges? They're in the back yard on the ledge next to the orange tree. When the tree trimmers trimmed the tree, they left the fruit from the branches they trimmed. Rob walked outside and said words which struck terror in my heart - where'd you say those oranges are? There's nothing on the ledge.
Turns out that my gardeners took all 30 of them. Knowing that his wife had been watching and waiting since July for the oranges to be ready to be squished in her awesome Breville juicer, Rob quickly called the head of the garden company to let him know that someone better bring back those oranges pronto or else heads will roll (or something like that).
So this morning an embarrassed-looking head of garden company turned up at my door with a bag of my oranges. The gardeners had eaten 5 so I was down to 25 which equals 12 tall glasses of juice - 6 for me and 6 for Rob. I put Sparky on guard duty so there would be no further orange-napping. I'm happy.
I like to think I'm a generous person, especially this time of year. But don't mess with my oranges.
Claire and I couldn't get our peace sign right. We tried it in different places around the house but it never quite worked. So we gave up and hung it on the chandelier where the letters continually twisted and turned and it never really spelled much of anything, except for this one and only moment that the word "peace" was readable.
Our decorating this year was minimalist. At least our version of minimalist. This was due to the late arrival of my helper elves, and all the different distractions that kept them from their decorating duties. Anyway, we all ended up liking the way it all turned out. Outside we draped a couple of fresh garlands over the timbers on the garage (above) and over the porch trellis (below). We have some white lights around the columns and trellis and that seemed to be enough.
The red came from the entryway. A red poinsettia, red kissing ball, red bell garland on the door, and red on the flag which has rested there since the 4th of July and has become a familiar and welcome site.
I love this fake square wreath from Crate & Barrel. The dove is something that remained from our Christmas card of many years ago where we posed as a magician family, with Rob sawing Claire in two. Yet another Hummel Christmas card that doesn't have much to do with Christmas.
Claire and Emily did the mantle, using another fresh garland and pine cones and berries and giant fake candles and things like that. My "gnome Santa" (left) and little birdie (right) seemed to fit right in with the woodland scene.
Em and Claire put these old-looking ornaments (actually from Restoration Hardware and Crate and Barrel) with pine cones and berries, on top of the table runner that Emily wove for herself a few years ago (but I like so much I won't give it up).
The back yard was decorated with oranges. This is the view from our bedroom window, and one of the few things that gets me out of bed in the morning this time of year.
And last but not least is a gift given to me many moons ago by my friend, Joanie. It hangs in the house year round as a reminder of what's important during Christmas and every other day of the year.
