I've been wanting to see Amritsar and the famous Golden Temple for years. It's sort of out of the way though and I never seem to make it. So this trip, I made it a point to get there. At an airport along the way I was told by a check in girl that when I got to Amritsar I would see "a clean Indian city." I'd heard this before but I can tell you this: I didn't see any such thing. It's an absolutely typical Indian city. I did like it a lot, despite it not being clean. For the record, the cleanest city I've seen in India is not Bangalore or Amritsar, but Kolhapur in Maharashtra. But Amritsar is nice. The Golden Temple is everything you expect it to be, even more actually. It's an enormous compound and I spent a few days there.

It has a great old town, which reminded of both Lahore and Multan. Why, I'm not sure I can say. But it definitely did. Very narrow alleyways, very colorful.