Amritsar is perhaps a shining example of an Indian city. It is hellishly busy, a little dirty, a little smelly and a lot polluted. Venturing out by rickshaw, as we have come to expect, is a life and death experience and so as (as far as I could see) there is little here to do other than visit the golden temple it is a great place to simply enjoy the comfort of your hotel. And as we had such a nice hotel it seemed almost rude not to do just that.

I did intend to venture out once more with the intention of getting some sunset photos of the temple. So at the appropriate time, after the main heat of the day, I loaded up my cameras and a book, kissed my arse goodbye (again) just in case, and hailed a rickshaw. This was without a doubt the most knackered auto-rickshaw in India and as we progressed at a stately 5kph towards the golden temple being overtaken by cyclists and pedestrians as we went, I started to doubt the wisdom of this decision. However, I could not have been more wrong because, whilst we progressed at a speed that would be considfered slow even when compared to continental drift, it turned out that my driver was the only one in the whole of India to have bothered to read the highway code and he got me to my destination almost unscathed.

Wandering into the temple it was my intention to spend a quiet few hours reading and taking photos. I should have known better :). Within no more than a few moments of finding my seat I was surrounded by a crowd of people all keen to chat and have their photo's taken. And so I spent a happy few hours chatting to sikhs and hindus from all over who had journeyed to the temple some on pilgrimage and some simply sight-seeing, but all keen to chat to and have their photo taken by the strange white guy in the corner. Turned out to be an immensely enjoyable afternoon and goes some way to explaining how I ended up with lots of photos of Indians standing in front of the golden temple :)