Day 137 Thursday 1 February 2007 Amritsar, Punjab, India

After breakfast moved from the Ritz to the nearby Ranjits SAAVA, a beautiful heritage spa hotel virtually next door which is in an old sprawling red stucco mansion. After checking in we take a rickshaw to the Golden Temple, the headquarters of the Sikh religion in the centre of the old city. The autorickshaw dives down a maze of narrow alleyways, fighting with handcarts, bicycles and other rickshaws to beat the traffic to get to the temple. We take off our shoes, wash our feet and enter the compound, a vast quadrangle of 3 storey white buildings surrounding a large rectangular, marble paved lake in the centre of which, connected by a 100m causeway is the beautifully ornate golden temple. The lake is a lovely shade of turquoise, with Sikhs in colourful turbans or saris, perambulating around before queuing up to cross the causeway.

We enter the temple and marvel at the marble inlay and gold decorations, as well as the ceremonial reading of the sikh holy book. Its filled with petra dura, semiprecious stones embedded in marble like an ornate version of the taj mahal. Then in mid afternoon we head back to the hotel to pick up a car to take us to the border closing ceremony 30kms west.

For those who aren't familar with Michael Palin’s account of this, its a ceremony performed everyday to strike the flags on both sides, scripted and choreographed by Monty Pythons silly walks team. The tallest Indian and Pakistani soldiers, resplendent in kharki and black respectively with tall red plumes and handlebar moustaches strut up to each other in the best silly walk style, strut and do face offs whilst the crowds assemble d in the grandstands on each side of the border are whipped up into a frenzy of patriotic fervour by cheer squads. The soldiers pull faces at each other in perfect coordination before taking their respective flags down in perfect unison and slam their gates shut. The whole performance takes about 30mins and the soldiers on each side then pose for photos with their respective countrymen. All very silly indeed.

Distance Today: 0km Trip to date: 21,063km