Selassie I said:
All of the above. How can I possibly choose just one of those ???
Alrite, I'll do the border stuff first
Wagah Border is near Amritsar in Punjab state. Here every evening Indian soliders do a closing parade/ceremony w/ Pakistan's soldiers. Pakistan has there own seating area on their side. Obviously I was on the Indian side. Its basically a party before the actual ceremony. There's patriotic songs blasting and everyone is dancing. Ladies and kids could go down and dance, while the men stayed in the stadium and had fun. That went on for a couple hours. Then when it was time for the ceremony, the soliders opened the gate, did their high-steppin march, yelled and lowered the flag along w/ Pakistan. Here's a vid (no this isn't mine)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMbH_6tryiw[/youtube]
But man leading up to the seating was a fuckin nightmare. There were 5 long lines before we could go through, but once once we did, 5 lines turned into one massive blob. Soldiers did their best to control the crowd but it wouldn't work until they got on horseback. I got really pissed at one guy over there. I followed a solider's guidance to move to the right but hidden in the crowd was a barrier, which I couldn't get around and no way in hell was I going backward. As I was making my way over there, a guy behind me pushed me, and I fell forward almost running into a little kid. I told him (in Hindi) to calm down, stop pushing and take care of the little kids. He starts going off me, saying who do you think you are, etc. etc. He continued to push but I refused to let him through. Eventually I reached the barrier (before him) and had no choice but to go under it (solider guide). The guy then goes off on me saying I jumped the barrier and how he got left behind. At this point I just gave him dirty look and w/o saying a word dared him to do something about it. He didn't. BUT not 5 mins went by when that jackass jumped the barrier and went ahead of me. Luckily the solider's got him. I didn't do anything because he was a local and I knew he was going to have a crappy seat. Because once the blob ended, I ran over to the foreigner's line, busted out my US passport and got VIP seating. Which in India means you don't have to deal w/ idiots. After that, the border ceremony was awesome and got some pics w/ some of the soldiers (although I look terrible in them).
How I almost died....
At one point we had some time to kill, so we decided to go to Mt. Abu, a resort on top of a medium sized mountain. We hired a driver from the airport to take us there. The charge rate was 7 rupees per km from our house and back (keep this in mind). At the border of Gujarat (my state) and Rajastan, we thought "hey we've been to Abu many times, lets go to Udaipur instead!" Udaipur is a historic city for the ancient Maharajas and battles and stuff, really neat stuff I learned. It's only about 60 or so miles from Abu, so we asked the driver to go there. For whatever reason, he got upset over it but took us there. He talked annoyed the whole way, saying shit like "there's nothing over there." Finally we got there, and checked into the hotel. The hotel guy then gave the driver a list of places to see and in what order to save time/money. The driver got pissed and said no at first, but eventually came around. The hotel manager (who was an amazing person) knew in 5 minutes in meeting w/ this driver that he meant trouble and warned us about him. We took his advice seriously. The touring was brutal; not the actual places those were beautiful. Every time this driver dropped us off at a place he asked where to park and how long it would take. How the hell should we know? It was our first time there. And each time we came back, he said we spent too long a time there. At the end of the first night, we were supposed to visit a Lake Palace, the driver said he was going there but instead he took us back to the hotel. We asked him why not the palace he was "you can't go to the palace now." We gave him a look and angrily (hehe) said fine we'll go tomorrow.
Next day we went to a place about 15 km from the main city to visit a historical battle site, w/ a show, museum, history, etc. It was good. However, on the way back the driver drove like a maniac. He overtook other cars on a 2 lane high way narrowily missing trucks from the opposite side. Once back into the main city, he still drove like he was drunk, dodging cars, animals, and pedestrians. Then our final stop was a huge museum called City Palace. To get there you have to drive through narrow alleys, which our idiot driver did. At one point a small child was stepping down from a store and had he made 1 more step or our car a couple inches to the right, he would've been a gonner. Thank God he wasn't killed. He drove like a maniac to the palace. When coming back, he damn near got me killed by driving in the opposite lane. At this point I told him to stop and calm the fuck down. We tried to explain him how he was driving, and he did comply. However, on the way back to Gujarat (our home) he started driving crazy again, although not as bad. Regardless I kept my eyes on him in case he did something.
Finally got back to our house at 11 pm the second night, and remember the rate? 7 rupees per KM from house to house? Well, the slimeball then said 140 extra rupees for him coming and going to the airport. This pissed me dad off to no end, he went off and they started arguing in the middle of the neighborhood. Luckilly my mom was there so no fists, and the little rat took the actual charge. My mom said if my brother was there it would've been worse. At the end, I was just thankful I was alive.
Rest some other time kids.
