Our trip to Amritsar started with a 3.45am alarm call for a taxi that was supposed to pick us up at 4am for our 5.15am flight. 'Supposed to' was, unfortunately, appropriate as he didn't show up! By the time we had woken the poor hotel receptionist and sourced another it was 4.40am and we were still half an hours drive from the airport!

Not for the first time this trip we made the flight by the skin of our teeth - being ushered by very lovely and helpful staff as we ran through the airport to the waiting bus. By now we were holding up the flight and the other passengers (mostly businessmen) looked none too amused when we got on! But, we made it! As did our bags . . . somehow! There are some joys and benefits of haphazard indian flights!

On landing in Amritsar we were greeted with the chilling (literally) news from the pilot . . . "Welcome to Amritsar, the outside temperature is 3oC"! . . . . brrrr! Somehow our hotel room has actually managed to be colder than outside too and with no proper warm clothes (and a reluctance to buy new ones this late in the trip!) this left Gemma with no option other than to put all her clothes on at once! Including PJ's under jeans!

Our visit here is a real quick one-nighter to visit the Golden Temple - the holiest of Sikh sites and, as it turned out, one of the most beautiful places we have been. The pictures do not do the place justice and could never capture the atmosphere of the place. The temple sites in a huge holy pond that pilgrims also bathe in whilst visiting (it was a bit too chilly for us to join them!) and the whole complex is very peaceful. The atmosphere is all the more enhanced by the fact that they have an array of expensive Bose surroundsound speakers pumping out the hymns from inside!

We were the only non-sikh visitors while we were there and loads of people made a point of coming to chat to us and make sure we knew what was what what to do when, which was really sweet. We also got chatting to various people from all over the world from Canadians' to a family from Wolverhampton! There were also groups of young teenagers who wanted to take photo's with us and practice their English. They kept telling us we were really beautiful . . . we liked them a lot!

In the evening we paid another visit to see the temple lit up at night. Although very stunning (see pictures) having to go barefood on toe-curlingly freezing wet marble at that time of day meant that we didn't stay too long! Coming out of the temple we met a really cool American Sikh (converted 30 years ago and now a Guru!). He was dead interesting and left us with some DVD's on meditation to check out when we get home! On second thoughts, maybe we showed a bit too much interest . . . . . . !!

Another of our early observations of India is how much they love their cricket! There are three cricket TV channels and every spare patch of grass, dirt, concrete or road is taken up by some form of game (and yes Kev, Graham does keep threatening to join in . . . though Gemma's managed to talk him out of it so far . . . we don't want him shown up by a 5 year old child!).

We are really pleased that we made the trip up here. The visit to the temple and a relaxing day spent here was well worth the air fare . . . and then some.