Onward Travel Planning

07-12-2009
Arrangements made and some sightseeing done!
Golden Temple
During our time in Amritsar we only ventured out of the hotel grounds to complete the remaining chores such as pick up laundry, try to get the new sim card working and visit the freight forwarders who we wanted to transport Caf’s GS to Goa, the latter needing photocopies of everything pertaining to the motorcycle and Caf’s connection with it. Another thing we’ll have to get used to is that any company/department carrying out any type of work for us will need multiple copies of all paperwork, but they don’t have copiers so you spend hours walking around in the sweltering heat and humidity trying to find somewhere that does, and just because they have a sign outside the premises advertising Xerox, that in itself doesn’t mean that they can!

One of our rare outings from the hotel was to visit The Golden Temple, which is Amritsar’s main attraction and pretty much the only reason any tourists, domestic or international would come here. It is Sikhism’s holiest shrine, sits in the middle of a massive pool of holy water in which people come to bath. The temple itself is covered in 750kg of gold and is truly an amazing sight, with the sun going down, the priests chanting continuously and the thousands of worshippers making their way around its grounds, it was as far removed from the bedlam outside as you can get. When arriving at the temple everybody has to remove their shoes and wash hands and feet before they enter, men as well as women must also cover their hair, and we were not surprised to find plenty street hawkers offering us small pieces of cloth designed to do exactly that, for 100Rs, obviously.Golden Temple At Night!
The night before we where due to check out I approached the hotel manager to see if it would be possible to forward Caf’s airline e-ticket to his email account so we could print it off in his office, “no problem, 10Rs a sheet my friend.” The taxi was booked for the morning, by the hotel manager, the cost being 50% more than we expected because the driver had to stay at the hotel overnight to guarantee he was there at the desired time, I assume when I was outside loading my motorcycle ready for departure and he turned up it was because he had just nipped round the corner for a pack of cigarettes! So I waved goodbye to Caf, fired up my bike and once again rode solo into the morning mist thinking that we would see each other in around two weeks.
My first day on route to Goa was spent riding through the Punjab state, I really enjoyed my ride though the Pakistan Punjab but this was way, way different, the humidity here some thousand kilometres south was so heavy and thick I felt like I could chew a mouthful of it. If you picture a mist, early on an English morning, in autumn, but add thirty degrees ambient temperature to it you may just get the idea, my clothing was so wet it was like I had ridden though a waterfall and then diverted though a carwash for good measure. The day jogged on, with the sun now higher in the sky the humidity seemed less oppressive and with the workers beavering away in the paddy fields I felt like I had the best deal, chugging along at a steady 50 mph I had all the time in the world to soak up this new country and was really enjoying the contrast, that was until my course took me away from the single track country roads and on to what we term A and B roads in the UK, unbelievable, absolutely abysmal driving, and by that I mean f*%!ing terrible. I’m not sure what the accident rate is but I would guess that if you have a 10 kilometre commute to work everyday and get there three times out of five without having been involved in or at the very least witnessing an accident then you’re doing pretty good.