Hot Marble and Slamming Gates

 
Golden Temple

I'll be keeping the yapping at a minimum on this post because I have tons of photos to upload.  Stayed at a hotel located inside the compound of the Golden Temple, the holiest sight for the Sikh religion.  Not sure I could do it justice describing what we saw, but I'll give a little rundown.  Enormous walled in structure all in white marble.  The whole joint is white marble.  The floors, the surrounding building, steps, you name it.......except the Golden Temple of course.  No shoes allowed, you check them at the door.  Gotta cover your head and I felt uncomfortable busting my camera out, but I saw the locals doing it, so I went for it.  We were there two hours and we were the only white peeps in the joint.  In the center is the holy water...........gotta sit in there with your legs crossed.  
White marble and 117 freaking degrees......my feet are freaking hamburger.  They line the walkways with burlap and Sikhs' roll around with hoses watering it down.  The water was evaporating before it hit the ground.  It was insanely hot........the place is packed 365 days a year from 6 in the morning until 2 in the morning.............lined up to make it into the Temple.  Crazy!  It was pretty cool in there, music going in the background and people walking around quietly.....even the kids...........Here we go.......

Walk through to cleanse your Hooves!

So they have a big huge box of head coverings.  I just grabbed a blue one and out of no where a Sikh grabs me and hands me one that matches my shirt and smiles.  They were loving the white man with bright orange.

The other white dude needs color coordination also......no big deal....we got ya covered!

As you can see, I'm about 24 feet taller than Winston covering the full 86 feet in height while W comes in at 62 feet.

One more self promoter! Looking good Broseph!

Miles of marble....it's 117 bills out and the Sh%^ hurt when you walked on it.  Burlap built in pedicure, blister maker, and hot coal simulator came in at a paltry 150 or so degrees....I stepped on the marble once and it was hotter than a red neck summer picnic  Pensacola.

Sikh HQ!

Bridge headed to Pray........our hotel was right behind those two spires.....don't get excited, 10 bucks a night....no hot water...left the top off the toilet so I could pull the plunger from the tank to flush it. 

That line is about 50 wide and 300 feet deep.....there were thousands behind me sitting on the floor under misting fans waiting to talk with Guru Actual.

The pictures don't this place justice.  I have dozens more......I'll save them for the crew back home.   

So you two bozo's brave triple digits, survive heat stroke, heat exhaustion, bad traffic, horrible Veg Chicken crunchy something at KFC and Paneer burger at the Golden ARCHES to visit the Golden TEMPLE for three hours?????......BTW.....WTF is Paneer.......kinda like Tofu for you uncultured out there.  I can't figure out why they put the nasty crispy breading over it.  Wait....because it's an American fast food company and it needs some sort of ingredient that allows it to stay in your system for six weeks........at least their ketchup is spicy..........for some reason. 


Hellz no sports fans!!!!!!......we're loading our asses in a cab in an hour and going to Pakistan..........Well within forty feet or so.  Let's do this!


India-Pakistan Wagah Border Closing Ceremony.  Google it, long story going back almost fifty years.  To say they don't particularly care for each other would be a gross understatement.  They do this every day....great show.  Arrived at 3.......got in the stadium around 4:30 and baked at 117 large til the madness started at six.  And it was madness.  All the foreigners were put in the front, India is very proud of there tradition and heritage......and it showed here.....or maybe use us for sandbags when Pakistan decides to shell India again.  While driving the hour to the show, I asked our cab driver if he'd ever been in Pakistan.....he said in VERY broken English......"Oh NO, Pakistan very bad!"  Crowd was crazy, temps were crazy, here comes the goods.......

So I roll in and homeboy is standing right next to me behind the sand bags, hopefully there is room for both of us when things go bad.

The other side!  They were late to arrive.  Might see it in follow on pictures.... Burqas' on the right dudes on the left.

The Home Team!  It's just after 4, we're just pre-funking right now.

 

First, the girls danced!

Then they opened the gate!

The Border Security Force formed up, marched to the gate, rendered greetings and postured up!  These Punjab dudes are huge, I saw none of them under six-five and the dude down on the left was built like a Brick Shit House.  He was the comedy portion of the show.

They lowered the flags, slammed the gates shut and went back to hating each other........and once again things were back to normal in Punjab and Kashmir!


 Punjab was good to us, the people are great; tomorrow we ride!