Long Day, Short Blog

It has been two weeks since I have blogged and a lot has happened. I have had a cold, diarrhea, and tension headaches caused by bad posture when studying and using my computer. Now I am typing on a suitcase set on a chair in the hope that this will be better for my neck. I have started three blogs before this one, but have been too busy to finish them. I will finish this one. The big thing that has happened is that my traveling companion Robert arrived in India. He let me know on Friday that he was coming for sure and last Monday he was here. Wednesday we left for Amritsar and the Golden Temple. We had a good time in Amritsar (I hope to send the best of the unfinished blogs in a day or two) and then this morning, Saturday, we started out on a trek to the hinterlands of Punjab. We took a three-hour ride on a state bus (very basic) to Faridkot where there is a fort, a palace, a shrine to a Sikh saint-poet, a library and a clock tower. From the bus station we took an auto rickshaw driven by a stately Sikh that the young translator called Bap-ji. He took us to what we think is the only real restaurant in town, the hotel restaurant of the Trump Plaza Hotel. It turned out to be quite good. Robert had chicken soup, and I had chicken kabobs, yogurt with mixed vegetables, and tandoori roti. Both of us were a little under the weather by this point and ordered accordingly. I have been leery of Indian food since my bout with the runs. I hope I get over this. After lunch, we found a bicycle rickshaw whose driver had only one working leg. He took us to the palace, library, and Sikh shrine, but we missed out on the fort and the clock tower. The shrine was great. It honors Baba Sheikh Farid, a 13th century poet I have read. Inside the glassed shrine there is a large remnant of a tree. I don’t know what this is about. Research. The driver took us back to the bus station and we took a private bus with Bollywood music playing the whole time to our next stop where there is a big fort that we will see tomorrow. I have never been so deep into non-tourist India. Few people here speak English. I directed our rickshaw driver in Hindi and had to use it again with the young man at the hotel desk to find a restaurant. In this town so far, I have found no Western restaurants so it was Indian food tonight. There are a strip of small restaurants opposite the train station and I ate in one of these, dal made of small dark beans, Indian cheese with peas, rice and very good roti. The bread up here is great. It has been an exhausting day. Robert has been having trouble with his back and the bus rides don’t help. We can get a train out of here, but there is one more small town that Robert wants to see that is reachable only by bus. Riding through the Punjab countryside was great. It is very agricultural – a lot of wheat, a little rice, I think, and beautiful patches of bright yellow mustard that they were harvesting. I also saw a woman winnowing wheat by tossing it from a basket into the air. There are also a lot of brickyards with tall chimneys over the kiln and stacks of bricks around. The bricks here are used a lot in the local buildings and they are beautiful, a soft red, and molded not cut, so each one seems slightly different from the others. Long day, short blog. I hope to write again soon. Luke