Border War

1/21 In the evening, I took a little shared van to the Indian border with Pakistan to view the crazy and wild border closing ceremony which occurs at sundown. When you get to the border area, you go through some security and then are ushered into stadium type seating. The majority of the people there are obviously Indians with a few westerners sprinkled here and there. When the ceremony starts, Indian military and border guards dressed to the hilt in fancy suits and with crazy hats come out doing just over the top high stepping. On the other side in Pakistan, a similar thing is happening. There is a guy in a sweatsuit that is sort of like a crowd warm up artist or something (or mascot you could say) getting the crowd revved up. They are all waving Indian flags and chanting things (like India India! and likely F-U Pakistan in Hindi) Then all the guards line up and do a yelling contest against the Pakistani guards. A microphone is put in front of each soldier one at a time and they yell for as long as they can before they are out of breath. This goes on for each soldier, and when each one is done, they march to the border gate and do some fancy high stepping and a quick salute to the opposing pakistani guard. When all this is done, there is lots more fancy stepping and maneuvering (and of course plenty of cheering by both sides in the bleachers) and then finally they actually open up the gate which had been closed. Then one large luxury bus (with police lights on it) drove through across the border from India with everyone in the bus doing raise the roof signs and such. Then more saluting and high stepping and then finally both country's flags are lowered at the same time and they close the gate and thus the border for the night. After the ceremony, the crowd rushes down to the road where the soldiers are treated like celebrities. Photos are taken with them, handshakes, high fives, autographs. Really the whole thing was just a hilarious scene. It actually reminded me of a college football game at a neutral site, like the rockymountain showdown between CU and CSU, with the crowd on opposite sides of the stadium cheering (C-U, C-U!) and jeering and taunting (FU CSU, FU CSU) and waving flags while the soldiers down on the field do fancy maneuvers (fakes and jukes), and mascots and cheerleaders run around getting the crowd into it. After the border was closed and the photos with the celebrity soldiers taken (and of course lots of me and the two tall germans in my shared van who had done the exact same trip as me except starting in germany instead of the czech republic), the Indians retired back to this carnival type area with little rides and lots of popcorn.
Part of the interesting thing is that although this is like a competition thing, it is actually very friendly compared to what you hear about the Pakistani/India border in areas up north where the border is disputed and they are constantly firing shells at each other
That evening I went for some more food at the temple and then checked the temple out as it glistened under lights at night.

1/22 I visited the golden temple at sunrise and had lots of chai as I circled around the pool. I then went out and explored Old Amritsar by foot and attempted to find a private/ac overnight bus to Manali. Lots of people tried to help me, but in the end we only found one bus that wasn't a local bus, but I wasn't quite sure if it was really going, so instead I took a bus to Chandigarh 5 hours away and then caught an 8 hour night bus to Manali from there that was a private bus. In India, b/c the transport is so cheap, I am more than willing to take the private/ac busses as opposed to the local buses for night trips for a few reasons: I feel a bit more secure about my luggage on the more expensive busses, the local busses are much slower and some of the most uncomfortable buses I have been on (same buses as in nepal) for a night journey as the seats come up to about my lower shoulder so there is no putting your head back, the seats obviously don't recline, and there is not really enough leg room for me. But one of the main reasons is that the ac busses are sealed off well and b/c it is so cold right now at night in the mountains, those busses stay warm while the local busses with their leaky and often broken windows are ice boxes. In fact, the bus I took to Manali had HEAT! It was the first time I had felt heat (that wasn't a wood or yak dung fire) since last winter at home. So this meant that I slept well on the night ride up to Manali at an elevation of about 7000 feet. I arrived into Manali about 6am and of course it was bitter cold. I walked through packed snow to find a hotel room and then went to bed again until the sun came out.