Street food

I can’t visit anywhere without sampling the street food and as soon as my visit to Amritsar was announced, accompanied by a faraway look and drops of saliva, were cries of ‘Oh, you must try and Amritsari Kulcha,’ and so I did. It was served adorned with two sizeable rectangles of white butter which proceeded to melt into the bread as they were smeared round and round systematically until they disappeared leaving a glistening glaze atop the hot, perfectly cooked kulcha. I looked upon it admiringly before being encouraged to dive in. One word suffices – divine. Must try. A crime not to. This was at the Amritsar Famous Kulcha & Nan but I also had a personal cookery demonstration at Amritsar Paneer Burji & Sandwich and was sadly too full to sample the goods at Kesar da Dhaba but, go better prepared than me (ie having not eaten breakfast) and enjoy. I am sure that there are many more places and please do let me know about them, sadly I only had time for the three.

The Durgiana Temple

This is otherwise known as the Silver Temple because of its ornate silver doors but other than that, it is pretty much an exact replica of the Golden Temple. Built originally in the 16th Century, it was remodelled in the 1920’s and fashioned upon the now much more famous version. This isn’t a Sikh Gurudwara but the most prominent Hindu Temple of the Punjab and, although not quite as grand as the Golden Temple, makes for an interesting visit.

Mata Lal Devi Temple

This has to be one of the most extraordinary temples I have visited in the whole of India. Not to take away from the sentiment and facts behind it, it is a Hindu temple which commemorates the bespectacled 20th-century female saint Lal Devi who was born in Lahore District, in now Pakistan, in 1923. She is said to have had an extraordinary gift and the temple now serves as one of importance for all women wishing to start a family as it is believed that the main one was special fertility giving powers. Which is great for all the believers out there. However, and please my dear Hindu friends, don’t take this the wrong way, but for the uninitiated, visiting India for the first, or possibly even second or third times, they could be forgiven for thinking that if a group of people took speed and then decided to build a temple, this is what you’d end up with. It is quite quite fabulous and yet quite, quite bonkers, in equal measure. On my visit, I spent quite some time being followed around by a wild eyed priest, crawled through a cave, entered the mouth of a lion, crawled into the mouth of a cow, landed into a stream, walked past udders dripping on the Shiva Lingam, out of the cow’s bottom, past some very interesting characters, was turned into a kaleidoscope, only to finally be met by the goddess herself! An experience I will never forget and one which should be on any list of places to visit in Amritsar.

However, The Golden Temple IS extraordinary, I loved it and would happily visit it again and again. This is mainly because, for me, this isn’t just a dead monument, it is a 24 hour living, breathing hive of activity so extraordinary as to be almost incomprehensible (I don’t think grammatically, that makes sense). The Sikh sentiment behind it is one where anyone can visit. It is the world’s holiest Sikh shrine, but is non-denominational in that anyone can worship there. It is also a temple where pilgrims, devotees, the poor, tourists, in fact anyone who fancies bobbing in for a meal and a chai, is fed for free. This amounts to anywhere between 65,000 and 100,000 people per day – yes, you read that right. How to even begin to consider how to go about catering for that many people is enough to make one’s head spin, and a feat worthy of the tiffin walas of Mumbai, but when you think that the entire temple is operated by volunteers, from shoe storage, to cleaning to food preparation to chai churning and serving, not to mention washing up is all run by volunteers (it was worth repeating). Anyone, including yours truly can venture into the kitchens and lend a hand.

Of course, there is a lot more to the temple than that; as already said, it is the world’s holiest Sikh shrine, which stands in the middle of a sacred water tank, in fact the word Amritsar comes from amrit (nectar) and sar (pool), referring to this sacred tank. The initial building was founded in 1577 by the fourth Sikh Guru, Guru Ram Das and it is the still existing (even more so actually) visual representation of all that the Sikh faith represents that is truly inspirational and heart-warming. It was only in the early nineteenth century, after having secured the Punjab region from outside attack, that Maharajah Ranjit Singh, in celebration, covered the upper floors of the gurudwara with gold. Hence it’s English name of The Golden Temple rather than the official name of Sri Harmandir Sahib.

Maharajah Ranjit Singh was the grandfather of Sophia which brings me to mention a great book, Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary by Anita Anand, a very interesting read.