At the Pakistan Border

Indian Border Guards - Part Performer, Mostly Security Guard

We traveled by car to the city of Amristar, which is the home of the Golden Temple, but also a city that is close to the India/ Pakistan border. It turns out that the changing of the border guards is a well-known and popular event each afternoon that culminates with the joint lowering of the Indian and Paikistani flags.

It quickly became clear to us that this is no typical changing of the guards like you see at Buckingham Palace. There, and in most places, you just show up and press your face against a fence and watch some colorfully costumed guards march across a courtyard to change places.

This is a much bigger show. At the end, it felt like we had attended some sort of sporting competition, rife with the penant hawkers, food vendors, and the requisiste black market CD and

Ray Ban sunglass sellers. It was great fun and entertaining, too

Picture a stadium bisected by a wall and two gates which  would be the actual border gates of these two countries. India has its security guards and Pakistan its guards dressed in blue.We sat in the foreigners, VIPs section closest to the gates.

The first activity is flag running to the border. Indians stand in a line for  the priviledge of running the Indian flag to the border and back. It actually touched my heart to see citizens smiling and laughing, and obviously cherishing the priviledge of showing national pride in front of fellow neighbors, friends and family. About 20 children, single women, older men and women run the flag.

The ceremony ends with the lowering of the flag and the slamming
of the respective gates. 

After the flag running, women, primarily, break out into the street, singing and dancing.
There seems to be no issue of modesty in this crowd!

Then the ceremony to end the day begins in earnest with the
ultimate goal to be the lowering of the flags.

The whole event is light hearted,but make no mistake that the security is tight.
They checked our documentation, of which we had none, really at that moment,and
they patted us down twice- women and men in separate lines.

The Indians let the VIPs and foreigners leave first, so we quickly went back to our driver,
but not before sampling Indian snacks and buying a bootlegged CD for 100 rupees!
Great day to be alive in India!