THE GOLDEN TEMPLE
This is the place which never ceases to amaze me! The most sacred of Sikh places, the Golden Temple attracts more visitors per day than the Taj Mahal. The sacred place bears some dark memories on its history pages as this was the place who’s premises echoed the sounds of gun shots and canons back in the year 1984 during Operation Blue Star and again in 1988 during Operation Black Thunder II
Aged, 8 years, I was not living in the Amritsar city at the time of Operation Blue Star as my father’s posting as an engineer in irrigation department was at a small town called Kotla near Anandpur Sahib, another one the most important Sikh pilgrimage places. As my father got re-posted at Amrisar, we were back again in the holy city when Operation Black Thunder II took place and I remember the sounds of fired shots and watching the “light bombs” fired by security forces, exploding in skies over the Golden Temple at night to get a sighting of the hiding separatists off guard and to trace them.
The tourism suffered a lot owing to the effects of these operations and an era which affected thousands of families in Punjab and families related to Punjab, living abroad or otherwise living elsewhere in India. The things started to get smooth and it took a few more years for normalcy to return to the state of Punjab.
About three decades later, Its now very safe and secure to visit the city and roam around as much as you like. I feel that if you have to get the real taste of the city and its surroundings then plan on spending at least three full days here.
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A large part of your memories about the city would be overpowered by the street food of Amritsar which is just awesome! I will keep on posting pictures related to all the aspects like the street food which I mentioned and would describe in as much detail as I could about every picture. …and yes, I started the page with the text saying, “This is the place which never ceases to amaze me!” I will give more details about this topic in my future posts.
Bye for now 🙂