It's strange that since I moved to considerably cleaner and better maintained accommodation that I've succumbed to illness three times, whereas previously at the dingy accommodation I was in, I did not fall ill but once. Perhaps there was a mental element involved, where my subconscious was aware of the fact that being sickly in the mouse infested guesthouse would be a highly unpleasant experience. Here, it is much more at ease and perhaps my immune system is less vigilent as a result.

Food poisoning and fever aside, I reach the end of a busy week to look forward to landing in London at approximately this time in exactly three weeks time. A few more days with OLPC India and then I shall head south to the beaches of Goa and Cochin, and to visit a nursery school run by friends of my mother in Madras. Out of the grand reading list I took to India, I still have eight books remaining, so the following weeks will be spent head down, reading furiously.

Last weekend I took the opportunity to cross several experiences off my 'tourist' list of things I'd like to do. I went to visit the Swaminarayan Akshardham, a vast temple (complex) built by the followers of Swaminarayan. A stunning effort, completed only very recently, and very welcoming to visitors. They have several attractions for visitors, including an incredibly well presented animatronics display of the life of Swaminarayan, a boat ride about the Vedic scriptures and an iMax film.

Needless to say, it was all very informative, and while highly skewed information, I can positively say I learnt something. Their story of the life of Swaminarayan reminds me of the Bible's stories of Jesus that were recited to us in primary school, and it seems that within religious groups which are based on the teachings of a single person, the description of their life eventually omits anything which might possibly lend credibility to the story.

For instance, Swaminarayan was said to have conquered scriptures (including the Vedas) by the age of seven. Having encountered many seven year olds, I'm not sure that is physically possible. I won't go into detail of the other unbelievable facets of his life that were described but a little humanity would go a long way towards softening the hardened religious cynic like myself.

I found the boat ride amusing too, as they described how Vedic culture had led to the discovery or invention of many modern inventions but many thousands of years ago, and notably before Western (or Ancient Greek) philosophers were thought to have written about them. Examples include-
- Trigonometry (believable)
- Astronomy (true)
- Aircraft (really?)
- Spacecraft (what?)
- Nuclear Weapons (seriously?!)

It reminded me of the Goodness Gracious Me sketch where the father argues that the British Royal Family is actually Indian. Still, The Moosra, always the patriot, vehemently defending the Vedas with an excerpt describing nuclear war. While I can't vouch for the authenticity of the translation, The Moosra ensures me he has seen the source text in Sanskrit.

A single projectile charged with all the power in the Universe... an incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as 10,000 suns rose in all its splendor...it was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes an entire race.

The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Their hair and nails fell out, pottery broke without any apparent cause, and the birds turned white.
After a few hours, all foodstuffs were infected. To escape from this fire, the soldiers threw themselves into the river.

Heavy reading and a shockingly accurate description of what a nuclear missile might look like, based on what I've read in the past. There does seem to be some similarity to what is described in the accounts of the explosion of the volcano at Pompeii and other volcanic explosions. Still, food for thought.

After battling through the touts at the Delhi Railway Station, I arrived over an hour early for my train to Amritsar. As I stood on the platform, I hoped desperately that the train would be relatively cleaner. A fun aspect of travelling, and travelling alone at that, is that you get to meet some interesting characters who you would normally not speak to. One of these characters was an Irish-Punjabi gentleman with as strong of an (Irish) accent as they come. He was on his way to Jalanghar, and seemed to be very jittery. I have yet to figure out if that was from (eager?) anticipation of the train ride to come, or if he was suffering withdrawal symptoms from some kind of narcotic.

The train seats were large, there was plenty of room, a power socket to charge your laptop (which I only noticed near the end of the journey, oops) and the cabin service was excellent. (Disclaimer: I travelled 1st class.) My only concern would be the provision of only one Western toilet. I can see a high chance of falling into the toilet were one to attempt using a squat toilet on an oscillating, fast moving train.

The train was delayed in arriving to Amritsar which made the process of finding my hotel all the more exciting (or scary). Walking down an unlit street past various street dwellers sleeping on the roadside, I started wondering if I'd soon lose possession of my valuables. After an hour of searching, a kind gentlemen led me straight to the hotel. Being late at night, they had turned the lights off, so I had actually walked past the hotel four times previously but had not noticed it.

I spent the following day exploring Jallianwala Bagh, a historically important park where hundreds of Sikhs were massacred by the British, and the Golden Temple. Alarmingly, outside a gurudwara I visited, a Sikh gentleman came up to me with his knife drawn. As my heart started racing, I realised he had noticed the rips in my jeans and was asking if I wanted him to cut the bottle half of the trouser leg clean off.

Walking into the Golden Temple I made several religious faux-pas, not having my LonelyPlanet guidebook in hand, and being generally unobservant.
1) Walked into the complex wearing my hat. I was told to remove my hat. Walked out and removed the hat.
2) Walked into the complex without anything on my head. I quickly noticed that I was getting some awkward looks and that everyone else had their heads covered. I quickly reneged to find a head covering.
3) After wandering around the walkway, I saw a food counter where they were selling prasad. I walked up to the counter, donated enough so that they gave me a metal thali. I then ate some of it before realising that people were heading into the temple itself with their bowls. Another NRI then explained to me that I'd have to offer it within the temple by queueing up for nearly two hours which I didn't have time for. So on his advice, I ate the prasad and had to deposit the thali on the side somewhere. Severely embarassing.

In the afternoon I took a taxi the thirty or so kilometres to the Wagah border post to witness the border closing ceremony. At Wagah is the only open land border between India and Pakistan and the soldiers performing the ceremony try their hardest to act on behalf of their nations. It turns out that visiting anywhere in Sunday is a mistake (the locals come out in vast numbers), and the Wagah border is no exception. In the horde of Indians trying just to get through the entrance gate, I managed to lose skin on my left arm.

Protecting my camera, I ran towards the next queue. This queue was bottlenecked by a metal detector about the size of a doorframe. Indians being perpetually rushed, the crowd kept pushing forward and this made the situation worse for those at the front, which is also where the Indian Army officers in charge of crowd control were stationed. Instead of easing the pressure, they decided to close the gate whilst an angry officer without a megaphone shouted to the crowd to move back ('pitchar'). The irony is that, being unable to hear the officer, the crowd shuffled forward, thus exacerbating the problems at the front of the crowd.

Eventually they opened the gate, and as I approached, it became less necessary to walk and simpler just to let the flow of the crowd push me towards it. At the gate itself, another angry Army officer was losing his nerve and beginning to strike people at the front since he thought they were pushing forward. As it was, they had no control over their motion.

My view of the actual ceremony was dismal and repeatedly blocked by taller Indians or shorter Indians with turbans. I quickly grew tired of straining for a view, and as soon as the ceremony was finished, made a dash for my taxi before the crowd could block the exit route. What I did experience though was the pulsating patriotism of the audience - flags were waved, 'Hindustan Zindabad' was shouted and young girls danced to Bollywood music. Of the ceremony itself, I saw the guards raising their legs whilst walking in a hilariously unnatural motion, and what seemed to be some sort of faceoff between the guards of both nations.

I made it back to the Golden Temple at night and much preferred the view. I ate dinner with the pilgrims in Guru Ka Langar, the community dining hall, and aside from a slight faux-pas where I dropped a chapati on the floor and didn't eat it (leading to some more disparaging stares), it was an enjoyable experience.