Hotelnet: Sun 20:15

A late start this morning -- I suspect I may have over re-familiarised myself with alcohol last night.

I followed the hotel man's advice to walk to the Golden Temple this morning though his instructions on reaching the overpass to go straight on were asking a lot as it forked. I might point out that the overpass is the place in Amritsar to pick up your new motorbike helmet.

Some lucky hunches and a redirection out of a different temple -- I thought it was a shortcut and was wondering why everyone was barefoot -- and I was in. A deal busier during the day, as you might expect, it was a bit easier to people watch.

Most people, like cathedrals in Europe may or may not be religious but are simply touring around and having their photo taken ("I was here"). There were, of course, genuine devotees stripping off and taking dips in the holy pool surrounding the Golden Temple itself. One old boy, dressed in only his soggy shorts and turban jabbed a finger in my camera and wasn't happy until I'd taken his picture in front of the pool to which he chortled merrily to himself and trotted off.

Western tourists must be ten-a-penny round here and yet a group of lads still wanted their picture taken with me, in a group then individually. It must be the rakish way I wore my head scarf.

I then popped into the Sikh Cultural Museum above the main entrance where there were various gory paintings of battles and martyrdoms -- people were terribly inventive a few hundred years back -- and even there people were having their picture taken in front of the paintings.

I went round the corner to Jallianwala Bagh, the site of a notorious massacre by one General Dyer in 1919 of several hundred innocent people gathered to protest at the anti-sedition laws which saw Indians arrested on suspicion. The massacre is covered very clearly in Richard Attenborough's Film, Gandhi. At the inquest Gen. Dyer said that he felt he had to send a message to the people of the Punjab. A very clear message that set the ball rolling for Independence.

That was it for the day, I wandered back through the Old Town (like Lahore, looking suspiciously new) and decided to make vague plans for the trip round India but largely surfed the net and watched bits of a crappy film.

Good news for Bhutan. I've had a reply from a tour organiser who merely needs me to send a copy of my passport and the exact dates of entry and exit to Bhutan and he'll do the rest -- $200/day in Bhutan (all inclusive, fortunately). Of course that means I actually have to plan my trip in a little more detail than I have already. Which is pretty much not at all.

That means maps and books to the bar!