Closing of the gate ceremony, Wahga

An early start to visit Lahore Fort. It’s more of a walled city really as it is so big. We didn’t get into much of it as it was in such a state of disrepair. No time for the gardens.

Then we set off for the border, and after saying goodbye to Irfan we got on a little motor train with our bags for the start of the processing, in the Pakistan building. Bags went through normal security then we had customs when they needed to look in all the bags. Then it was passport control. We walked through the Wagha gate then it was the Indian processing which took ages, particularly for women who had 3 lots of scanning for bags, dog sniffing and body searches. We had to wait for a transit bus which dropped us at the bus park where our new local guide was waiting to greet us.

We then were driven to a restaurant which was very slow- finally got lunch at 3.30 by which time we were concerned we’d not get back to the gate in time to get good seats for the closing of the gate ceremony. it was traffic chaos which a long walk amid heaving masses of Indians. After finding seats we could watch the stadium fill us with more than 20,000 people. Apparently it is full every night. There was on a small grandstand on the Pakistan side. Ted and Lai Yong had not been able to get Indian visas so they watched from Pakistan and even spotted us amid the 20,000 - they put the proof on Facebook.

The whole event was a great raucous spectacle. The heat was intense, and vendors were selling brollies and fans. Women came waving flags, there was loudspeaker music and the army encouraged the noise to be as great as possible to drown out any from the Pakistan side. When the soldiers appeared in ornate uniforms with huge red plumes on their hats the noise was fever pitch. Unfortunately something happened my camera after I’d done a little video clip, which resulted in all pix being in 1 second bursts and they wouldn’t download as stills.

After a lot of athleticism by the armies on both sides with high kicking and twirling of weapons they had a bit of a face-off at the gate. At reveille the 2 opposing flags were lowered simultaneously then there was further stomping about before each side shut their gate.

When it was over all we had to fight our way through the 20,000 to walk the half mile or so to our bus. It was about 45 minutes to drive to our hotel in Amritsar. Our hearts sank when we were directly to walk down a narrow dirty alley to the hotel. It was a wonderful surprise to find it was a beautiful 200 year old house in lovely grounds, full of old-world charm. It had many small living rooms with old furniture, pictures, plants, books and ornaments. There was a central courtyard with rooms leading off it. Ours was on the third floor leading off from a roof terrace. It has aircon, and is so up-market it even has a plug for the sink. We were given a lovely vegetarian meal, though there was some disappointment when we discovered there were no G&Ts. The Kingfisher beer went down well after our very sweaty day. It’s a magical place.