Sikh tractors
Amritsar to Bathinda, 5th - 8th October
Amritsar was a lovely time. I stayed with my aunt, ate good food, got my bike worked on at Decathlon and of course, visited the Golden Temple. I faithfully delivered the hundred rupees donation given to me a few days prior, and ate langar from the world's largest community kitchen. I could have probably stayed longer in Amritsar but I could tell that I'd soon get tired of Punjab and want something new, so after three days in the city I left to go south towards Rajasthan.
My route took me through Tarn Taran, Harike, Faridkot and Bathinda, all much smaller places than the cities I was in earlier like Ludhiana and Jalandhar. A family friend had told me I might be able to stay at the HMEL refinery township near Bathinda, which also affected my scheduling, but in the end it didn't work out - as a non-Indian citizen, they didn't want to let me stay in a sensitive installation near the Pakistan border.
I've been enjoying how many different types of vehicles I've seen in the roads here. The most common customised vehicle is a cart pulled by a motorbike (replacing the back wheel), but in recent days I've seen a new species: tractors pulling covered trailers full of Sikhs. There's a festival coming up, one of the Sikh guru's birthdays, and it seems like a lot of people are travelling around to various gurdwaras to celebrate. There are also horse drawn vehicles, which surprised me - I would've expected them to be entirely replaced by motorbikes by now just for economic reasons.
As I headed south, I did indeed get tired of Punjab. The novelty has worn off, and now the villages feel quite repetitive. The population density is grating on me, and I want to escape concrete to get into nature more. I was hoping that Harike Pattan bird sanctuary would help with that, but unfortunately I was turned away from the gate, told that it was the wrong season for the migratory birds and that it would be dangerous to let me enter because of falling trees. I was quite disappointed - I'm not usually much of a bird watcher, but I've been enjoying how many birds have been around in Punjab so far.
I also took some more highways instead of sticking just to village roads - initially because it was raining (my first rainy day!) and I didn't want to deal with the poorer surfacing, but then just for a change of pace. Constantly giving myself the same kind of surroundings was making me bored and one thing I need on a bike tour is novelty. Highways also let me keep up a faster pace, which will get me to a new state that much sooner. Weirdly, I sometimes find it easier to take breaks when I'm on a highway. I can stop in the shade of a tree on the edge of the road and I feel much less liable to be caught in conversation than when I'm stopped somewhere around a village.
The strangers encounters continue, of course. On my way out of Amritsar, I was welcomed to a Sikh mela and personally guided around and given tea and pakora by someone who I think was just a random bystander. In Faridkot, I went to get my watch fixed and consequently got a cheap room in the city centre along with some food recommendations. And on the road, I continue to get interviewed by passing motorbikes about where I am going and what I am doing, always with heartfelt well-wishes.
Finally, although I didn't get to see the migratory birds at Harike Pattan sanctuary, there have still been plenty of birds around. I don't manage to capture most of them on camera, but I do get a few.