When planning our trip to India in November 2007, there was one attraction that was set in stone - the non-negotiable, 'come hell or high water', must-see destination for us was the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Ever since I read a review in a guidebook to India saying that Golden Temple made the Taj Mahal look a tad on the tacky side, I was hooked. Regardless of where else we were to go, Amritsar was a 100% sure thing.
My cultural references for the GT were relatively few. It appears in the background of one of the song and dance sequences in 'Bride and Prejudice'; it has a key role in the life (and death) of Indira Gandhi, a woman I'm fascinated (and sometimes horrified) by; and you'll find a picture (or two) on the wall of any Sikh business you ever visit. I'm fascinated by world religions and there could be no better place to learn about Sikhism than at its heart. On a list of modern day wonders of the world, the Golden Temple would have to be right up there in the Premier League.
I was so fixated on the temple that it had blinded me to the task of finding out what else there was to do in Amritsar. I had in my mind an image of a leafy garden city abounding in beauty and basking in the golden glow of its most famous attraction. I convinced myself that there must be LOADS of things to do in the most holy Sikh city. I booked a hotel for 3 nights for my husband and me and our friends booked just the one night because they needed to head back to their father's village due to some family 'troubles'. Thus hubby and I were facing a massive three and a half days to see a city that can easily be 'knocked off' in 24 hours if you are pushed for time. Thankfully, I'd at least managed to find a hotel where we were able to dither away many of the hours and surprisingly, once we'd accepted that we were there for the duration we adapted to the forced slow-down and just spent a very lazy time.
Why the Heritage Inn?
It's not that easy to get good advice on finding a hotel in Amritsar. There are few of the international hotel chains, most booking sites cover only the more expensive places and even then, not in any great detail. Alternatively you could stay almost for free in the Temple's own accommodation - I think Michael Palin did that but it's a bit different when you have a camera crew in tow.
I found the Heritage Inn thanks to a fellow member of the trivago travel website who added the hotel to the site's database. In my role as an 'approver' for hotels on trivago, I read up on all the hotel details and so when I needed a hotel in Amritsar, it was the first I thought of. The hotel appeared to be clean and simple but most important of all, it was very close to the temple. Knowing what I now know about the layout of Amritsar, I would choose this hotel again on the basis of the location.
Most of the better or fancier hotels lie to the north of the railway line and are too far to walk to the temple. If every time you want to go anywhere you need a taxi, it can be exhausting. There's only so much arguing with drivers that I can be bothered to deal with. We were just a few minutes walk from one of the entrances and as we spent most of our time going back and forth to soak up the GT experience, proximity was important
Arriving
I always find my heart is in my stomach when I arrive somewhere new. What if it's really lousy? What if we've booked a cockroach infested hovel? What if we get robbed in our beds and left for dead? Well, maybe not quite that bad, but you get the idea I'm sure. Arriving in Amritsar was a shock. We'd been spoiled by our previous destinations - the beautiful vertiginous Himalayan city of Shimla, the clean and geometric city of Chandigarh, even the primitive solitude of our friend's dad's village in the Punjab. Amritsar by contrast was right back to the full-on traffic, blaring horns, polluted air and bedlam. I don't know why I thought it would be different. We had no map, not much of an address and no clue where we were going. Our driver asked other drivers and a policeman or two who pointed us in the right direction. The grubby streets were crowded with cars, cycles, pedestrians, stray dogs and busy people. Eventually we found our hotel, a modern building opposite a small park on a street with no businesses, restaurants etc. Just a relatively quiet place.
Checking In
We had booked and paid in advance through a link on the hotel's own website. Thankfully I'd printed out the confirmation and had it ready. Our friends hadn't and this led to a bit of a dust-up over the check in. If anyone has read my account of the trauma we had getting away from a hotel in Chandigarh, they may know that one of the friends we were travelling has a bit of an issue with anger-management. His default setting is set to ten on the conflict scale which, considering he works in a high security prison, is understandable but not always acceptable. My attitude is 'It's India, things go wrong, smile and accept it' - his is 'what kind of morons am I dealing with'.
The receptionist had no record of either of our bookings and made a bit show of looking in his diary, shaking his head, tutting and rubbing his chin. He was happy to accept my confirmation but reluctant to deal with our friends because they'd not got written proof. They got ratty, he checked his emails and eventually found the booking. You have to wonder what would have happened if we'd arrived and he'd already filled all the rooms. He asked for our passports and the next problem came up. Our friends had left their passports with their relatives so there was a bit more aggro over that and I think they just made up some numbers.
We got our keys and asked about getting transport to the border with Pakistan to watch the flag-lowering ceremony. This led to a 'lively and heated debate' (to you or me that's a bit of a row) about the amount that the hotel wanted to charge. I know it's all part of the culture and for some people, part of the fun, but I just can't park my innate British sense that it's not 'nice' to get mad at people. I'm no push over in any negotiation but I won't get upset, rude or angry about the price of a taxi.
We headed up to our rooms, taking the steep marble staircase because the hotel doesn't have a lift. Our rooms were on the second floor and were absolutely OK. Our room was small but spotlessly clean and extremely beige; magnolia walls, cream tiled floor, beige bedspread. The bed was one of the most comfortable we had during our trip, there was a good sized bed-side table on each side, a wardrobe, a chair, a TV with zillions of channels of utter tosh and a semi-comfy chair. The bathroom had a shower, loo and basin and an extractor fan. Despite being an 'open plan' bathroom (i.e. no cubicle around the shower) it was designed well enough to stop the soggy loo-roll problems and flooded floor that can so easily happen. We did struggle to figure out the hot water system - one day it was hot at night, another at mid-day and another first thing in the morning. We got into the habit of checking the water frequently and hopping under the shower at the first sign of any warmth.
Hotel Facilities
To be honest, there really weren't any. OK that sounds a bit flippant but there was no restaurant or breakfast room as far as we could make out. We saw a lot of guys in uniform stomping noisily up and down the staircase delivering cups of tea and things on trays but I don't know what they were or where they came from. There was no gym or pool or any stuff like that because people don't go to Amritsar to run on a treadmill. There was a small seating area in the lobby with a TV and some newspapers but I think that was more intended for the enjoyment of the receptionist when there were no customers around. There's no bar - but then you can't drink alcohol within several miles of the temple so that wasn't surprising either. For info, if you find yourself in this part of Amritsar, it's also forbidden to eat meat or eggs - so if you have a craving for an egg bacon and sausage McMuffin you're in the wrong place.
One of my favourite pastimes was lying on the bed watching the legs of the pigeons roosting on the top of the air-conditioning unit. Once we'd worked out that was the source of the strange cooing and scratching, it was quite fun to see them scuttling around.
What sort of people stayed there?
The hotel has some really big family rooms and attracts large middle-class Indian families making pilgrimages to the temple. It also draws in some of the most unfriendly tourists I've found anywhere in the world. I don't seek out the company of other tourists but I do always smile and say hello and I don't normally get cut dead and totally ignored. Every time we passed other tourists on the stairs they seemed to look the other way or straight through us.It wasn't only the hotel that had this problem There seemed to be a really strange stand-offishness about tourists in Amritsar which was in bizarre contrast to the extreme friendliness of the locals. Amritsar's not on the normal tourist trail - it's not like Agra or Jaipur where everyone goes. It's only on the way to Pakistan or Kashmir. The Europeans we came across all looked to be having a thoroughly miserable time and to either of the 'just spent three months meditating in Dharmshala with the Dalai Lama and really don't want to be contaminated by westerners' type or were 'we just got over the border from Pakistan and want to be considered really 'hard-core' travellers'. With the exception of a Russian couple we met in a café who chatted happily about their plans, nobody wanted to mix at all.
Service
The politest terms I could use would be 'surly' and 'indifferent'. The less polite term would be lazy. Despite our room being immaculate when we arrived, it wasn't cleaned at all during the three days we were there. The bed wasn't made, the towels weren't changed and the loo roll ran out but luckily we found a spare. This might in part have been our own fault - we didn't rush to leave the room in the mornings and were seldom out before 11 am so perhaps the cleaning staff had knocked off by the time we'd gone. The receptionist had a tendency to answer the questions he thought we'd asked rather than the ones we had - and it just felt like too much trouble to try to ask for cleaning.
Our train out of Amritsar departed at about 10 pm so we asked if we could have a late check out. The answer was 'sure, no problem, but we'll charge you for an extra night' which seemed a bit on the mean side to me. It wasn't as if they'd have to clean the room twice!
Do I recommend?
Perhaps surprisingly the answer is yes. The location is second to none - really close to the temple yet surprisingly quiet. There were plenty of cafes to eat in just around the corner, and it's also very close to the Jallianwallah Bagh gardens. Once the landscapers finish tarting up the little park opposite it will also be a pleasant place to while away a few hours with a book or some postcards.We paid just under £20 per night per room and, whilst that's far from the cheapest you'll find, I thought it was pretty good value and I quite possibly would use it again. But I won't book quite so many nights next time.
