Timbaktu/anniversary with Priya

Pic: Sari we bought for Priya


As I said in a previous post, I and Priya went down last weekend to Timbaktu. It was a pretty nice trip. Photos are on my phone and not downloadable until I get my laptop, unfortunately. We drove down, a 4.5-ish hours drive (for me). We took a short detour on the way to the "Lepakshi" temple. This is not a temple I had heard much about previously, but it turned out to be a minor gem. Its set on top of a rock hillock and is constructed with a large compound and gorgeous sculptures and a very good feeling to it. We spent an hour or so there, I'll upload some photos later. I am getting somewhat frustrated nowadays with sightseeing, as I wish I could just sit at the spot and reflect for as long as it feels appropriate, but that never seems to happen. I tend to get very reflective/meditative/broody at good tourist spots.

Priya got along well with the people at Timbaktu. We had a memorable 2 1/2 hour conversation with Bablu and Mary, co-founders of Timbaktu, after dinner on Saturday night, that was pretty much the highlight. I think Priya also somewhat felt the magic of Timbaktu, which I feel strongly. However she had a headache, probably from the heat which she is not used to, for pretty much the entire trip, which spoiled the fun somewhat for her. An amusing tidbit: I have taken her to a couple of other NGO places and her impression was that NGOs were basically serious austere places. Timbaktu is a more earthy, human place where people try to have a good time ( for eg. chicken, booze, movies etc. are all part of the game here). She got quite a surprise from Timbaktu.

There was an edgy moment when we were discussing Vinayaka Chaturthi and Priya said she wouldn't eat non-veg on that day, and Mary asked, with a bit of sarcasm, "Why, will Ganesha be unhappy if you do that?". Mary tends to do that kind of thing.

The anniversary imploded a little bit after the trip with an argument between us, but we ended up sorting it out. We did some clothes shopping for Priya and went to an upscale (average main course dish: 200/-) Chinese restaurant, Mainland China. The place was packed even though it was a weekday. There is so much money flowing in Bangalore.

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The annual report for Timbaktu is finished, and we are getting the paper version soon. I will also be putting up the soft version on the website. I 'project managed' this thing, and I am quite happy that it was a useful contribution on my part. Apparently last year, Mary spend a stressful 1-2 weeks on this. This year we were able to work it so that with effort from several people, and co-ordination from me, there was little input required from Mary. So the way I look at it, I might have saved her 1 week to 2 weeks of time and considerable stress. That's like a 2-5% saving of time this year for the most senior person in the NGO, so that's quite a cool thing right ?

My next task at Timbaktu is also pretty interesting. Timbaktu is going to be part of a fairly high-profile "NREGA Padyatra". Okay now backtrack and give all the background. NREGA is National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. This is a pathbreaking act passed last year (or early this year), that guarantees 100 days of labour work for any person asking for it. Its a social security thing, and all NGOs feel that its a hugely positive thing. This first year its being implemented in 200 districts and will be extended to covert the entire country in the succeeding years. So the government has decided to do a 'social audit' in Anantapur district to check on how well the program is running, since these kinds of programs are usually misused and the money does not always go to the person it was meant for. They way they want to do this, is have people from the local NGOs and some outsiders to fan out across the district and have meetings in lots of villages where they compare what the government records say happened with what actually happened. When the data is all put together it gives a good overall sense of how well the program is running. So what Mary would like for me to do while this project is going on, is park at the 'nerve center' in Anantapur,where all the data will come in from the field and help to put together the daily english press releases for this (they have difficulty in finding people with good english language skills). This is a really cool thing for me in a number of ways. I get to go to Anantapur town itself, so far I've always been in the Timbaktu office and not ventured out. I get to interact with the other NGOs invovled with the padayatra including a very interesting one called Rural Development Trust which I may write more about later. Perhaps in putting out the press releases, I'll get to interact with the local journalists which will be cool. And finally, I'm told I'll be working with one Mr. Malla Reddy, one of the top dudes at the above-mentioned RDT and I always like hobnobbing with head honchos :-).

I'm supposed to take off in a couple of days (on the coming Sunday) to Anantapur to do this. Wish me the best.

"Integrative Solutions Pvt. Ltd."

One of the things that I was a little concerned about, in taking this sabbatical, is that there are lots of things in daily life where people ask you where you are working, and unexpected problems crop up if you say you aren't working. I ran into this for the first time, when I recently tried to get a cellphone connection (I took a Hutch connection. Whole other story about how it taxes my limited mental resources to understand which service provider and which plan is best for us). They asked me for my work information. Actually I was getting the phone for Priya so I should have given her info, but she wasn't around and I was planning to get the phone in my name. I was stuck for a moment wondering what to say for Workplace name and phone number. Then I entered "Integrative Solutions Private Limited". This was a name I had come up with long ago, when I was idly toying with the idea of what I might name a company if I should ever set one up. This is now growing on me, and I think, "Integrative Solutions" is going to be my 'alibi' going forward. Its a consultancy service that I am running out of my house, and does software consultancy, and pretty much anything else that you might want :-). Yesterday we were at a restaurant and they asked us to fill out a feedback form after the meal. The form had a field for "Designation". I entered "CEO, Integrative Solutions" :-). Like I said, its growing on me. Send some business my way if you can.

Update on worms/composting: so I got the folks who sold me the composting kit to come in and take a look at it. They did not have much useful stuff to say about the worms (actually maggots, but that word makes them sound more gross than they are). Anyway I basically rooted out all the worms and threw them all out, and the problem seems to be solved for now, though I'm sure not permanantly as these things breed like mad. Anyway the good thing though is the lady who came was quite happy at the state of my compost and showed me how to sieve the material to get the final fine-grained compost which gets applied. So I do have a small quantity of compost at this point, and once I get the sieve needed, I can get a bunch more. This is all quite gratifying.
For those of you who may wonder why I keep harping on composting, I really get a lot of satisfaction out of it. When you go around Bangalore you can see piles of garbage lying here and there and its really sickening. In our old place, the servant maid would take out the garbage everyday when she was leaving. I didn't follow up, but I guess she would just be casually chucking it in a drain close to our house. I asked around but didn't find out about any working solution to garbage disposal. On a macro scale the city government is way behind in coming up with working ways to dispose garbage. So now I'm really happy to be able to take care of most of our household garbage ourselves.

My manager at ex-work has been taking some interest in my sabbatical, and he recently called him. Apparently another friend of his is also looking around for something different to do and my manager told him about biodiesel and that I knew a little about it. The friend asked if he could meet me, so the three of us met up last night and I put some fundas. It was quite interesting and I'm happy to meet lots of different people and see what they're up to. This chap was BITS Pilani/ XLRI Jamshedpur/ McKinsey/ Various tech companies in the US/ Moved back to India to start the Indian office of an MNC/ Made a big stash of money and quit.

Hiatus

Greetings, greetings, greetings.

A long while away from blogging. I've been without a computer (and enjoying it actually instead of being miserable). The laptop search is convering though slowly. I learnt a bunch of stuff about laptops and computer shops in Bangalore so that is good. I'll probably get a Compaq Presario V3035 TU (I may have got that wrong). Its one of the new models with a dual core processor so promises to be fast. This series of laptops from Compaq is pretty sleek too. Its black in colour not the 'pearl white' that some of their other models are.

I resigned from Juniper in a surprisingly unwrought manner, I forgot about the whole matter quite soon after it happened.

I spent a few days at Timbaktu last week and finished a bunch of work on the annual report. It goes to the printer today it seems, they are to come to Bangalore and I am supposed to meet up with them to go with them to the printer but haven't heard from them yet.

I've been in Bangalore now for a few days. Its now relatively different situation to the past 3 odd months. Earlier there was some big thing or the other always on the radar (travels, getting settled at Timbaktu, working on their annual report) so there was something to keep me focussed. Now there is no specific thing. Timbaktu has settled down into somewhat of a routine, no travels in the immediate future. I have been doing errand type stuff (cleaning up papers at home, starting to work on getting a driving license, researching the laptop, picking up Priya at work), and have also been doing a bunch of reading. I'm trying to reorient myself to the new state and see what's appropriate to do.

Our 3rd marriage anniversary comes up on 29th August. After considering various stuff (still considering), I think we are going to go to Timbaktu the weekend before the day (falls on a Tuesday). Priya already got me a marriage gift a snazzy new Nokia phone (about 11000 Rs). Its a camera phone which I was keen on, and looking forward to start uploading (using Bluetooth) once I get the laptop. I got a Citizen Eco-drive (cool technology, no batteries, runs on 'vibrations from your body' or something) from her for my birthday earlier this year and it was pretty sleek too. I'm having a hard time finding something for her now.

Okay ciao. BTW -- this is from a clunky browsing center computer near our flat.

Guest post -- Puzzle by Arvind

The Buddha at the Kalachakra temple in McLeod Gunj.
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Arvind had posted this as a comment a while back:


To enliven the proceedings, here's a nice little puzzle (I define nice puzzles as simple questions with answers that are obvious only with the right way of looking at them.)

A group of 400 students stand 20 students in each row and 20 students in each column.





Person A goes ROW wise and mentally makes a note of the shortest person in each row. Then he picks the tallest of these people. Denote this persons height P_1.

Person B goes Column wise and mentally makes a note of the tallest person in each column. Then he picks the shortest of these people. Denote this persons height P_2.

What claims can be made about P_1 and P_2
( a ) P_1 >= P_2
( b ) P_1 <= P_2
( c ) P_1 = P_2
( d ) No relationship exists.

Arvind


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This may be the last post from my IBM T41 laptop from Juniper. Goodbye electronic friend, you have been with me through lots of ups and downs, good things and indiscretions. We've been to the US, Europe and Visakhapatnam :-).

Gorgeous Himachal

Composting ..

ran amok last night.

For some reason all the maggots in the pot decided to collectively desert the ship. They started dropping off the pot and crawling like mad all over the place and into the house under the verandah doors. We did some firefighting and stuffed the doorgap when we went to bed last night. Some of them nevertheless managed to get into the house, and the rest were scattered variously around the verandah. Altogether there must have been 40-50 of them. We disposed them off variously, some went over the parapet, some went back into the pot, and most are in a couple of containers awaiting further action.
Current hypotheses are as follows:
-- the bottom pot which sits on a container (see photo) has some airholes which are supposed to be properly covered with a terracotta piece to prevent the worms from crawling out. This isn't working properly in our case
-- we are going through a cold spell recently and the worms are seeking warmer weather
-- I sprayed some lemongrass water on the pot that morning which is a natural insecticide, as the flies were getting too much. Maybe that triggered the exodus.

Damage control is over, we are in watch-n-wait mode. Have to see what happens tonight and decide what to do with the captured maggots. The guys who sold us the stuff haven't been too responsive so far in our time of crisis.

Actually the guys are not too gross. One can get used to them after a while. But not in the house please.

Vaishnodevi - 2

BTW, they've introduced a new way of getting to the top of the mountain -- helicopter ! For 4000/- Rs roundtrip you can take a helicopter ride up, and land pretty near the temple.

After the darshan, I had a plate of delicious rice and rajma at a place outside. Then got back to where the swamiji was co-ordinating the stuff. By then my parents had also made it safely up and they went through the darshan too. My dad was not too happy at the pony ride up and contemplating walking down but I talked him out of it and he went ahead and took the ride down again. My mom also got started going down by the doli. I spent a while there helping the swamiji with his stuff. There was one woman of our group who had not been too well the whole tour, and she had anyway come up and she looked so out of it it was quite disturbing. The swamiji helped her to go through the darshan and along with a friend she headed off to catch a horse down. Meanwhile camera-lady was also there with a friend and getting ready to head down by horse too. I realized at this point that all the walking and sleep-deprivation had finally caught up and I was pretty tired and in not too good a shape to do the trek down. So I thought I would go with them. We headed off for the pony station only to be told that there were no ponies and we would have to wait awhile. Much confusion ensued for some time with various people tried various strategies. There were a few pony minder who agreed to do the trip down 'unofficially' at a higher rate than the standard. Unofficially, because there is some system governing the pony stuff, and these people were not supposed to go down at that time. The sick woman and her friend headed off. Meanwhile camera-lady's associate was not willing to shell out the extra but she was, so she was getting somewhat upset and acerbic with him. So after some back and forth it ended up with myself and camera-lady heading down together on ponies and the other chap (and another person who had joined us) still looking around. We headed off and basically it was okay and somewhat fun, though the prospect of spending 2 hours on that pony was quite formidable. The way it works is you are riding the pony and the minder walks alongside guiding the pony and making sure things are going okay. The minder will occasionally fall behind and leave you on your own and it gets pretty scary then, because the pony negotiates the oncoming traffic including other ponies and dolies on its own, and do you trust a pony to do that ? The 2 hour odd ride down by horse and 3 hours up is actually pretty punishing. Its a combination of extremes : boredom (sitting on a pony for so long), discomfort (bouncing around as the pony negotiates all the ups and downs) and concern-to-panic (every time the pony looks like its going to bump into someone or something). In my case, add an extra twinge of guilt every now and then for riding an animal in the first place.
I was physically quite comfortable in riding the pony. There were some theoritical fundas I read somewhere at some point about how you have to 'roll' your body with the motion of the pony and not resist and it worked quite well. I was feeling quite terrible about the unethicality of riding a pony and that too breaking the rules but well, having done it no point whining. We passed a checkpost at one point where something quite strange happened. One of the minders went to the checkpost to do whatever. Some stuff ensued and then finally a guy came out, shouted at him a bit. Then he asked him to squat in front of him and actually whipped him a few times with a thin stick. I was quite horrified at the behavior, but didn't do anything. There was not that much scope to do something given that we were breaking the rules (and perhaps that was what the driver was getting punished for in the first place), and it got over very quickly. The driver took it without complaining, it seemed to be something he expected. Anyway we carried along some more when my pony started exhibiting the disturbing behavior of kind of 'tripping'. One of his front legs would buckle and then he would right himself. The driver said that this was because the path was slippery from the light showers that were going on. I was feeling more and more bad for the pony. The buckling became more and more frequent and finally it became clear that this wasn't working. So we got off (the other pony also was seeing the same problem) and walked for a while instead. While this was happening it started raining quite heavily so we had to shelter under one of the covered sections of the path. It started raining heavily and then it got to raining *very* heavily and then it kept getting worse and worse. I was transfixed by the absoulute fury, so to say, of the weather. The wind was racing. A small stream of water had formed on one side of the pathway as the water from uphill was collecting together and pouring downhill. I watched in horrified fascination as the size of this stream kept increasing and increasing. There was an electric wire (someone later told me it was a phone wire not electric) running overhead and I was having visions of this thing being brought down by the wind. The gale kept going. I started getting really concerned about all the other people from our group on the track. As I was one of the quicker ones, there must be lots of people especially older people behind us. And my parents -- I didn't know if they had made it down. What about the sick lady. She looked in pretty bad shape, imagine how she must be in this rain. She didn't look like she had a raincoat either (I had a decently warm coat that was quite waterproof). To make my mood worse, a couple of other people from the party joined us in our shelter. The lady was completely soaked she didn't have any jacket or raincoat. She didn't look in any good shape at all. Finally when the weather got slightly better she and a few others pushed ahead on the theory that they were already soaked so it was better to keep going and get to the hotel room early rather than just wait there. I felt that was a pretty bad idea as the path was really slippery so I and camera-lady stayed put. Finally maybe an hour and a half later the fury of the rain more or less ceased and we got going with an umbrella. Camera-lady had walked up which was quite an achievement as I expect she did not get a lot of exercise in her normal life. So she was getting to the end of her endurance and it was still 5 or 6 km down. We briefly considered taking the ponies but I was anxious to just push on and it was hell of lot more slippery obviously so didn't seem a good idea. So we struggled down for the remaining kilometers, one of my more miserable experiences in recent memory. It was very much a mental problem the actual walking was not so bad. But we were so keen on getting it over with and getting back to the hotel and I was so worried about all the other folks and my parents. It was getting towards 5am by this time and it was light. Towards the end of the ordeal
we see sauntering down on a pony -- my dad ! He looked in decent shape but he hadn't seen my mom. He went ahead and we soldiered along. Finally it all got over we got down, got an auto, got to the hotel and my dad and mom were both there, my mom having reached earlier. Apparently her party had been almost all the way down when the downpour started so they were able to get out quite soon after it stopped.

When I reached the hotel after getting off the auto the first person I met was the swamiji waiting outside with instructions -- "pack your bags and be ready to leave as soon as possible". (The next leg of the trip was Amritsar). It was really pissing off, I was about ready to drop dead, and he was pushing us on to the next stage. I gave him a short reply that I was more concerned about whether my parents were back.

Anyway back to the room and a shower. I was inclined towards saying 'screw it' to the tour group and staying on for some more time in Katra to recover my breath so to say. Since so many people were still on the way down, one portion of the group would start immediately and the next portion would consist of the latecomers and start later, and I was inclined to go with them. But my parents felt that since we were down and basically okay we should just push on. The next shock was seeing our suitcases which had stayed on top of the bus all night. My expensive new VIP suitcase wasn't so hot we found out -- it had let the water in, and essentially every single one of my clothes in there was completely soaked and unwearable.The only things left were a few items in a bag that we had taken into the hotel room. My parents had better luck. I was not done with just that either. I had carried my passort along with me for IDing on the flight from B'lore to Delhi. I was concerned that it might have gotten damaged so started looking for it and I couldn't find it in the suitcase. I must have left it in the hotel room at Siddhibari !! Not only that, the train tix were there with it and I couldn't find them either. I spent a *very* unpleasant few minutes after that, contemplating breaking the news to my parents and their freaking out completely, possible courses of action and telling the organizers about it and all the chaos it would cause. All this was broken when I noticed that there was a separate zippered section on the top and something was bulging out of that. A quick check and it was indeed the missing stuff. I have this unfortunate tendency to store important stuff in good, safe places and then forget where I stored it. The case here again. Anyway struggling from all this avalanche of crap and from the continuing lack of sleep we packed up, lugged the suitcases down and managed to find seats on the already crowded buses pretty much concluding the interesting and unhappy chapter of Vaishnodevi.

The swamijis didn't look too concerned about the fate of the remaining people, they left a couple of the organizers back to take care of them and headed out along with us. I was particularly concerned about one older gentleman that my dad had made acquaintance of (he was the large gentleman of the three seater in the bus journey). He absolutely wanted to take the helicopter up as he wasn't in very good shape. But the service had been suspended at that point perhaps due to weather conditions. Having come thus far, he didn't want to cop out so he took a palanquin. I saw him up on the top about the time I was leaving. He was dressed in very light clothing. So I was wondering what had happened to him, and was very relieved to see him reach the hotel just at the time that the buses were leaving. Anyway, as it turned out there were no major issues and everybody did turn up in reasonable shape without falling seriously sick. The one sick lady continued to be sick through the rest of the trip and ran into more trouble later, I think she would look on the entire tour as one of the nightmare experiences of her life.

Jai Mata Di !

I have a small residual feeling of nausea about the Vaishnodevi part of the trip due to the way the whole thing unfolded. Probably why I put off blogging about it for so long. Anyway here we go.

From the ashram in Siddhibari, we headed off for Vaishnodevi which is near Jammu. We woke up at an unearthly hour of 2am or so after sleeping at 10 or 11. The previous night also we hadn't had much sleep so I was already in some level of sleep deprivation (not just me I suppose). We loaded ourselves in 3 buses and headed off for Jammu. I was sharing a 3 narrow 3 seater on the bus with my father and a hefty third person and very soon, it became apparent that the arrangement wasn't working. So I spent a lot of time on the trip standing or sitting near the door. Coupled with my lack of sleep, I started getting somewhat worried about my ability to climb the 13-odd kilometers that you need to climb to reach the temple from the foothills. The other options are to take a pony or to take a 'doli' (palanquin kind of thing), and both these seemed too wussy and somewhat unethical. We stopped for breakfast at a depressing dhaba in Pathankot. It started raining and the already bad road became slushly and completely yucky. Then we got caught in a horrendous traffic jam that kept us stuck for half an hour or so. Finally when we reached the J&K border, there were some forms or permits to be filled in and we got stuck there for like 45 mins. My mood kept getting worse through all this crap. Finally into Jammu and the weather also got somewhat better. After all the mystique of Jammu & Kashmir, the reality, as seen from a bus on the highway was considerably more prosaic. Stuff looked more or less similar to what we saw in Punjab. However, we were on the southern tip of the state and mostly on the road or in Vaishnodevi so I'm in no position to comment about J&K as a whole.

Finally after a final section climbing mountains we got to Katra which is the town at the base of Vaishnodevi. A hurried lunch and some logistics and people got underway.It was around 5 or 6 in the evening already by then. I thought the organizers would give up on doing the trip up to Vaishnodevi on that day and do it the next day but nope, we went ahead. People were set up in groups so that there was some degree of keeping track and off we went. The walking itself was a pretty strange experience for me. The first part of the walk was quite fun -- the lower part of the path is filled with shops and generally bustling and cheerful. We did see a rare sight -- on one uphill stretch a pony coming downhill started trotting a little too fast and the woman riding it panicked and ended up falling. She looked like she had broken some bone, she was in a lot of pain, but the facilities there are very good, and she would have gotten some help.
After the first stretch, people in the group started getting separated, and as the
other people in my group were pretty old people, I ended up ahead of the others and went ahead on my own. It was late night, quite cool and quite lonely but quite safe. I got into a nice rhythm and got a state of mental clarity and it felt like I was able to judge the walk perfectly and knew exactly what pace and rhythm was appropriate for my body at each second. Pretty wierd stuff. I took the opportunity to see if I could apply the clarity of mind to my broader problem of what I should do with my life :-), and came up with some answers, but those seemed kind of overwrought the next day :-(. Oh well, that happens a lot with me. Anyway the 13 odd kilometer walk passed really quickly and didn't seem like any effort for the most part.

By then, I was starting to get pretty concerned about the whole affair. There were all these old people straggling up on their own on different modes of transport, and especially the walkers, the older people must be having quite a struggle of it. And then after the darshan the trip down had to be managed and in the dead of the night (I got to the top around 11pm). They had some bureaucratic stuff going on up there regarding getting into the temple complex, but the swamiji was there to smooth things out for us and we went in without trouble. The most distinctive thing about the temple, which you are forewarned about, is that there is no idol. There is instead just a strange rock formation which has acquired religious significance over the years. Quoting from the official website:


These three heads in a natural rock form are known as the Holy Pindies and are worshipped as the revelation of the Mother Goddess. The entire rock body is immersed in water, and a marble platform has now been constructed all around. The main Darshans remain to be of the three heads called the Holy Pindies. The uniqueness of the Holy Pindies is that although they emanate from one single rock form, each one is distinctly different from the other two in colour and texture.

A picture of these pindies is here, but you can hardly make anything out.

The darshan passed mostly uneventfully for me, with a small side note. I had gone for the darshan with another couple from our group, a youngish pair who had travelled at about my speed. The woman had seemed very pleasant and friendly throughout. At the darshan though, there was some snafu and they finished the darshan and then realized that they had passed the main hundi into which they wanted to drop some offerings. At that point the woman proceeded to give the guy a real tongue-lashing (I guess he had hurried her along or something). Unfortunately the just concluded darshan of one of the holiest shrines in India did not manage to put her in a somewhat more devout or thoughtful frame of mind. It was a real transformation and quite a eye-opener and a disappointment :-). I saw her give him similar doses a couple of times later too. I kinda feel sorry for the guy, but then he seemed to take it quite docilely, and on other occasions he bossed her around too. So it evened out I guess.

Okay I'll stop here, but there's lot more to come about the descent from the peak!

The Wagah border spectacle

Seeing actual Pakistanis in person -- hey they look like us :-)
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Back again. A big backlog of things to blog about, as also of stuff to do in Bangalore so I'm feeling somewhat overwhelmed. Well, lets try to get blogging up to date a little.

Going back to the trip to Himachal etc., we spent a day in Amritsar. The highlight of that would be a visit to the Indo-Pak border at Wagah, which is a few miles from Amristar. There is a road line that runs through the border here, one of the few connections to get from one country to the other.

View of the Pakistani 'stadium'




There is a ceremony every evening held to officially close the gates of the border. All sorts of ceremonial things happen, with soldiers on both sides of the border clicking heels and marching around and closing the gates, lowering flag stuff like that. All fine so far. The bizarre thing is that both countries have gone and built huge stadium like structures on their side of the gates. During the ceremonies, people are allowed into these stadiums, and there is a huge racket that is set up by the people. They're shouting all kinds of stuff, mostly "india zindabad", "pakistan zindabad" kind of thing. Its not directly hostile for the most part, but definitely has a nationalistic element. As friends would know, I don't have much enthusiasm for gung-ho patriotism, but as spectacle this display is remarkly jaw-dropping. The Indo-Pak problems are such a deep part of our identity, and at the same time we never come across anything concrete, especially in the South, that we can relate to the conflict. At the border here, you get an eyeful, earful and more.
At the end of ceremonies the people in the stadium are 'set free' and they race forward to the gates and continue screaming from there. Wierd, dude.


Photo: A BSF officer came and talked to us for a while.

I would say kind of a must-see sight for most Indians. I'm glad I got this opportunity. Not only that through the good offices of the relevant swamiji (the head of the mission center in Amristar) we got VIP treatment and didn't sit with the crowd in the stadium, but instead in a garden right next to the border. We were close enough at one point of the evening to be within hailing distance of the Pakistani side and several people on the Indian side including yours truly tried to make gestures of friendship and say 'bhai bhai' stuff. The Paki people came across as definitely as interested in fraternality, though somewhat more restrained in their demonstration :-)
My absorption of the spectacle was somewhat spoiled by the 'camera-lady' who kept hectoring me capture this and that event. I'm a somewhat lackadaisical photographer, preferring most of the time to take in the sights rather than to capture them for postierity so I had a fair amount of trouble from camera-lady, who could get somewhat acerbic, during the trip, regarding this. I had to take it with a stiff-upper-lip, given the magnitude of what I had visited on the said lady in the first place.

Photo: Our group.
Photo: Me with the parents, you can see some of the layout of the area in the background


I've cut-n-pasted the Lonely Planet description of this phenomenon:

A harmless but entertaining manifestation of this long-standing rivalry can be witnessed every evening at the Wagah border, the only road crossing between the two countries.
About 30 minutes before sunset, the guards on each side assemble to parade and preen themselves in an immaculately turned out display of synchronised marching and bellowed military commands. The flag of each country is then lowered and the gates on each side are slammed shut. Crowds congregate on each side of the border, with the Indians and Pakistanis cheering on the efforts of their own guards and deriding those of the opposition. Some make a special journey from Amritsar simply to witness the spectacle.

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Next, hopefully soon: Long post about the whole Vaishodevi experience.