A trip to Singapore via Amritsar

Author: hargunsinghtikku June 10, 2016 1 Comment

A month ago, during a small family chat, me and my sister, Gurbani tried to convince our parents to go to any foreign country in these vacations, they said that they will think over it. The next day while having dinner, they told us that we were going to Singapore in the vacations and we were all very excited.

I spent much of my free time browsing good hotels in Singapore, we even planned to go to Marina Bay Sands for one night, but as we were going for only 6 days and we had so much to cover, we wouldn’t be able to spend a whole day relaxing at the hotel and it wouldn’t be worth it then.

Me and my sister also searched up the best tourist attractions in Singapore and shortlisted Universal Studios Sinagpore, Adventure cove waterpark and ScienceCenter Singapore. As we had to go from Amritsar, because the airlines hadn’t started flights from Delhi yet, we also booked train tickets for Swarna Shatabdi Express. We packed all the clothes and necessities for our weeklong trip (including Amritsar) by 23 May. Our train was to depart from Delhi at 7:20 a.m. on 25 May, so we got ready by5:30 and reached the New Delhi Railway station at 6:20, because “Better be an hour early than a minute late”. We browsed the nearby shops in the meanwhile. Our train reached the station by 7 ‘o’ clock and we went to our seats when the doors opened. The seats were so that, our parents were sitting together on a two seater and me and my sister were sharing a three seater with an uncle aged around 55(watch out for him, he appears later in the blog too!). We just relaxed for some time. Then me and my sister started playing Lep’s World on my phone, which is a game like Super Mario Bros. and we were trying to conquer the world 4-5(2 weeks later, we are at 6-5J). After 1 hour, we were served tea and coffee. And after another hour, we ate breakfast, my mom, dad and sister chose cheese omelette and I ate cutlets, the cutlets were stuffed with boiled and mashed potato and some peas and were very average. After 2 hours we reached Ludhiana and we bought a plate of Cholle Kulche which were very spicy and extremely satisfying. Then after another hour passed, we could see the river Beas which is one of the five rivers that pass through Punjab and it was right under us, our train was on an iron bridge which made a lot of noise when the train moved. Then I just closed my eyes and tried to sleep. After another hour, we reached the Amritsar Railway station and we gathered our luggage and got an Auto Rickshaw to first have lunch at All India famous Amritsari Kulcha, more popularly known as Chungi Kulche wala as it is situated right by a Chungi(police post). The taste was not that good compared to the last time we ate there and the ambience could be given 0/10 if it was rated as the cloth which covered the small eatery had many holes and had dirty water falling from the top. To add to it, there were flies and mosquitoes waiting to eat either from the plates or from your skin, which didn’t go well for me as I have a phobia of insects and reptiles (I really love most mammals though). Then we went to our hotel which was a 20 minute drive from the kulcha shop. The hotel was named Royal Vitana and was a new property. The reception was on the 3^rd floor and the lift could go straight to any floor, including where the rooms are and anyone can access the lift so that was a compromise on the safety too. The rooms were really spacious with a queen-sized bed. There was also free wifi in the hotel. We relaxed for 2 hours and while my parents slept and my sister was playing some solo games, I started reading Mrs. Funnybones by Twinkle Khanna for the second time as I was feeling bored and there wasn’t anything special to do by myself. Then we ordered cream chicken and some naans from the hotel restaurant as we were feeling hungry and weren’t in the mood to go out. The food arrived in 20 minutes. The cream chicken was cold and had a taste like kaju curry ( by that I mean it just tasted like cashewnuts). We then went outside as we had to go to Golden Temple too. We halted an auto rickshaw and told the driver our destination and just enjoyed the view. There was construction going on in that part of the city, from the town hall to the golden temple, many things were being renovated and some new things were being built. We went inside the golden temple, took a round and then stood in the queue for entering the main shrine in the centre of the sarovar. The queue was really long and it took us 20 minutes to o inside, there were many fishes in that area of the sarovar but when the lights in the sarovar were switched on, they all swimmed away. We went inside and prayed and then came out of the other way, we then drank some Amrit(holy water) and came out of the gurudwara. We then had to go to the house of a friend of my dad. We took an auto rickshaw again and reached there in 30 minutes. We had dinner there and my parents were talking to their friends. We left their house at 11 p.m. and they specially dropped us to our hotel. We then just changed our clothes and slept.