I forgot to mention yesterday that there was a very modern mall next to our hotel in Amritsar. It had a grocery store in the basement, so it was nice to go over there and get some supplies. There were serious-looking Sikhs at the entrance and separate lanes for men and women to get frisked as they entered the place. Did you know that Mentos in India are only 16 cents?? Wow.
My guide found out for us that the border crossing at Wagah is open only from 12-3 pm. So we had some time in the morning. I asked him if he and I could go back and see the inside of the Golden Temple. He happily agreed, so we went back. On the way, he stopped and we had a little snack called jalebi. It’s basically like a funnel cake but way oilier and sweeter. Honestly it was way too much for me, but I didn't feel like I could turn it down. We also had another treat that was like a piece of corn meal deep fried with honey on it. Also too rich for my taste, but we enjoyed it together.
At the temple there was about a 15-minute wait. It was completely jammed with people. The temple was beautiful. I liked it better than the Hindu temples we visited, because it was lighter. There were windows and inlaid marble as at the Taj Mahal. There were priests reading scriptures as we’d seen the previous night. But bigger, more impressive scriptures. Of course it was very hot, and there were fans going. The rooms and halls were all jammed with people sitting, reading the scriptures, and praying. Some were putting money in a money box. Some would wipe the threshold with their hands and then touch their hands to their heads and chests. The ceiling and roof were plated with gold and/or elaborately painted in red, blue and gold patterns. There were elaborate chandeliers for lighting. From the top we could look out on the surrounding pool. There were three stories we could access in the temple and the stairways and hallways were very narrow and constantly clogged with people.
After the temple tour it was time to get home. We were supposed to meet sister Javed on the Pakistan side of the border at 1:00 and we didn’t have much time. We drove out to the border crossing, and it was surprising how it’s out in the middle of nowhere. There were rice paddies and other crops as we headed that direction. While we drove, our tour guide told me about dowry practices in northern India. Apparently dowry payments are very common. He said that life is very difficult for people who have many daughters, because they have to save up money for those girls’ dowry payments.
Once we entered the border crossing area, we first had to show our documents to the soldiers to enter the border area. They wrote our information down in a ratty dime-store notebook. Then we drove up to the Indian border office. A swarm of porters tried to take our bags but I fought them off. We walked up into the building. I was frisked and Lily had to put her bag through a security screener. For some reason they didn’t screen mine at that point.
Next we went to immigration. We were literally the only travelers in the entire building. Two friendly immigration guys asked what we thought of India and asked us to sit down. We waited maybe 15 minutes for them to do their thing while a couple soldiers milled around and occasionally looked at us. Then we got stamps in our passports and headed to Customs. Our bags were put through a screener. He asked about the knives we bought in Dubai (those always seem to attract attention). He asked if they were gold and I said nope, just cheap fakes. He didn’t even take them out of the bag, and that was that. Then we interviewed briefly with a couple different customs officials. Mostly they wanted to hear whether we liked India. They didn’t ask any questions about what we’d bought or what we were bringing out of the country. We passed out of the building and had to haul our stuff across no-man’s land. We took a quick snapshot as we were about to enter Pakistan, then stepped over the painted line on the ground. There was a serious-looking soldier at the border who looked at our passports. I asked him (in Urdu!) what time the border ceremony was, and he told me 6:00. We walked past the seating areas where people can watch the border ceremony, and came to couple Pakistan officials who asked to see our passports. They were nice. I told Lily to put on her headscarf and they commented approvingly to each other that she was acknowledging “Pakistani culture” by doing so.
We walked another hundred meters or so to Pakistani immigration and filled out a bunch of forms. The lady asked me how much currency I had in my possession. I pulled it out and counted it, which was a little weird because I had a healthy-sized wad. I had about 30,000 rupees (about $200), plus a few hundred in dollars. The lady said, “That’s too much”—but she said it in a sympathetic way like she was making sure we wouldn’t have a problem.
I asked if I should split it between Lily and me, and she said yes. So we did. She took our form and then we moved on to chat with a friendly Pakistani official. He asked what we had done in India, what we were going to do in Pakistan, and who we knew there. He asked twice if I was going to stay in US Embassy (wow! tricky! asking twice to check for spies!) and I told him no, I’m a lawyer, I’m not in the US government. He asked what our Pakistani sponsor (sister Javed's brother) does for work, but I realized dangit I don’t know. I said Nosheen Javed works in a hair salon but I didn’t know what her brother (who is technically our sponsor) does for a living. That was not the right answer. He told me I would meet with another immigration official, who invited me into his office. A couple other officials smoked and looked on. He asked me if I wanted tea or coffee and I said no thanks. He asked me again about the particulars of our journey and identity. I sat up politely, gave him what answers I had, gave the phone numbers where we would be staying and for sister Javed, and gave him a copy of my business card. It went pretty smoothly, actually, and we were off.
We walked out of the building and a guy came up to me to change money. He said he’d give me 1.5 Pakistan rupees for each Indian rupee. Google says the exchange rate is 1.6, and I told him so. He said nope, that’s the price to sell Pakistan rupees, not buy them. I figured I was getting ripped off but changed $60 worth because I wanted to have some money in my pocket. He told me that when I got to Lahore I would see that’s a good rate. (Turns out he was right. Two days later when I changed my money in Lahore I was offered 1.3, and I had to fight and scratch to get 1.4.)
They loaded us on little train cars like the ones at Disneyland that take you from the parking lot to the gate. Remember that we were the only people crossing the border, so we sat and waited for someone else to come along and fill up the trolley. And waited. And waited. I said “Let’s go, sir!” in Urdu. He said no and laid back and started to take a nap. Hmm. Not cool. Waited ten more minutes and I said it again. No dice. I walked around and looked down the street where he was apparently going to take us. I asked him, “Can we walk?” in Urdu. He said no. But then he and the porters talked among themselves and one of the porters said, “We go for you. Special trip.” I thanked them and we were off.
We rode maybe 600 meters to a dilapidated bus stop area with four concrete benches under a concrete roof structure, each bench wet from rainwater that was still dripping through the roof from an earlier shower. We looked around. A couple maintenance guys and a shed, and some storage buidlings, but no sister Javed. Uh oh.
One of the employees gestured for me to come with him out into the road. That would put me out of sight of Lily, so I was a little nervous and she was VERY nervous. But I didn’t see any way around it, and anyway it wasn’t far from being in sight. So we went. The officer wrote my information in a dog-eared spiral notebook, and called sister Javed’s cell phone number. After a couple discussions on the phone, he told me she’d be there in 20 minutes. So we hunkered down to wait in the middle of nowhere, with Lily getting hotter and more annoyed at her headscarf by the minute. I heard snatches of conversation from the guys standing around who seemed to be maintenance or yard guys. All I could make out was “her father” and “American.”
While we were waiting I started up a broken conversation with a maintenance guy whose name was pronounced “MujamalLEHmahd.” We shared some cookies I had in my pack, and I told him he was “mera neya dost,” which is Urdu for “my new friend.” He called sister Javed's number and told us that she was going to be there in 20 minutes. We waited 20 minutes. Then about 20 more. Eventually the officer in the street called me back out. I’m not sure, but I think he said there was a lot of congestion a half-mile down the road and I’d have to wait for a while or walk down there. I walked back to the waiting area. Then my new friend went and got a little green maintenance truck. He put one of our bags in the bed of the pickup, and I threw in the rest. There was only one seat in the truck, so I went to climb in the back, but he gestured for Lily to get in the back instead. She did, and I got in the passenger seat. He took off in the direction that sister Javed’s car would be. Twice he had to sweet-talk an armed guard into letting us through a gate.
We drove down to where the road was bigger and the public had access to it. We still had to sit another 20 minutes, because sister Javed’s cousin (her driver) had gotten lost in Lahore. Finally they showed up, with a tiny car that would barely fit in four people and a small bag. Sister Javed was as cute as ever. She had brought three people with her, filling every seat. I asked whether they’d brought rope or something to tie bags to the roof, and they said that no, there was another vehicle coming for the luggage. So we got in and we were off to Lahore.
Unfortunately we didn’t make the border ceremony at Wagah that I had hoped to check out. Logistically it just didn’t work. Organizing transportation and other logistical stuff in Pakistan is complicated, and things often go wrong or take longer than expected. My Wagah plans fell victim to that.
We drove toward the place to stay that I’d arranged through airbnb.com. On the way we stopped suddenly, and Sister Javed jumped out to buy two large flower arrangements. She gave one each to Lily and me. She said that it’s a custom in Pakistan to have those arrangements for honored guests, and she apologized for not having had time to get them before picking us up.
We found the place I'd booked, which was a reasonably decent place by developing-world standards and had AC in the bedrooms but nowhere else. The best thing about it was that we could chat and kinda hang out, then go to bed whenever we were ready. It didn’t have a washing machine, so I washed my clothes in the sink and hung them on the line on the roof. Everyone was just kind of hanging out, so I hung out with them. Cricket was on TV, and a couple of the guys watched it lackadaisically. For dinner we had Chinese food that sister Javed had purchased, along with salad. Sister Javed said that she’d noticed on her mission that American people always liked salad, and that’s why she made it.
I was surprised at the ingrained inequality of the sexes. When used glasses accumulated on the coffee table, sister Javed’s uncle called her in from another room to clear them away. She was always expected to fetch people water when they wanted it. And no one ever offered to help her with the dishes. When I tried to do so, she looked really uncomfortable. I asked if it was weird for me to try to help her. She said yes, so I backed off. Mind you, the people she was expected to be serving included her little brother and another friend in the ward who’s younger than she is. It bugged me. I tried to set a good example of clearing plates, and it seemed like the men maybe started to get the picture because they cleared off some dishes too.
We had our first power outage that night—they happen a few times a day here—and lemme tell you, the concrete houses here get warm really fast when the electricity is off. But my bed and room were comfortable. I hit the sack and it felt great.
Narrow street in Amritsar
That's the India-Pakistan border behind us.
"My new friend," who used a government truck to get us from limbo to the pickup area at the Pakistan border
Our limbo area, where we spent about an hour at the border waiting and wondering what was going on with sister Javed
Lily, trying to be patient while we waited to get picked up in Pakistan
Lily, waiting in the government pickup for sister Javed to show up and get us
Sister Javed buying welcome flowers for us
Arrival at our place in Lahore. From left--a counselor in the Lahore district presidency; me; sister Javed; Lily; Sister Javed's little brother; another ward member.
