The train was nice and we slept the whole way there. Vinay had acquired our positions on the train through his own questionable yet sly and admirable means, although we didn't have actual tickets our places were secured and never in question. When we reached Amritzer however a ticket guard was waiting. Vinay, clever cat that he was had made friends quickly, easily and very conveniently with the entire section of our train. they in turn helped us sneak past the guard and out through a back entrance to the train station. A tuk tuk driver was already there to meet us and we drove away into the cover of night unblemished. It took us a few stops between one hotel or another until we finally decided on the one both cheapest and nicest in the area.The night was hot and again we felt the unmistakable layer of humidity ever present upon our body and soul. Since leaving Srinigar the weather had become much hotter and humid. Humidity is the kind of thing that never leaves you once you've felt it's presence long enough to consume you, it never sleeps or weakens and always leaves a bad taste in your mouth. For a fair portion of the night, much as Josh and I had done in South East Asia, we tried to get the AC to work, while we were successful, unfortunately we were only able to turn it on at 33 degrees which being of no use to us we simple left it off and dealt with our plight in simple caveman grunts, sniffles and the cliche tossing and turning in bed, as if some nightmare or thoughts of love, past present or future haunted our thoughts, as the night stretched on and on.In the morning we left for the Golden Temple. The market place was full to the brim and beyond with people of all shades and colors, dress and formality. From the Seeks to the Commoner coming far and wide from every corner of India for blessing, this was a place of religion in it's truest sense, one to bask in and present oneself to for the cleansing of the heart, body and mind, soul and spirit, flesh and blood, whichever you placed faith, pain and burden within, here all was washed away and only the shell of who and what you were remained.I went back to the hotel for my SOA hat because it was law that no uncovered head may enter the temple, a strange custom to be sure but one we all obeyed happily to step inside the temple. When I got back Blake, Vinay and Nilma were all posted up at a Coca Cola stand with a big sign that read soda -5, they were selling Coke, Sprite, limeca, apple Fanta and others for 5 rupees, the equivalent of which is 10 cents American. Granted they were in 300 mil bottles but a pleasure to be treasured in this heat non the less. Blake had already had 2 Cokes and when I got there I decided on Fanta and a Coke as well. The food and drink of the temple were subsidized by the temple itself, this is how they were able to be so cheap.Inside the temple walls was the Golden Temple Itself, there surrounded by water on all sides with a single walkway extending to it that had electric fans cooling the attendees as they walked the sacred path into and out of the shrine at center of the pool. People all around bathed within the waters of the shrine, of course women could bath as well but instead of doing so with the men they had small lodge like buildings connected to the edges of the shrine so that they too may bath and be cleansed in the holy waters.Before entering even the inner wall everyone must be barefoot and surrender their shoes at the many gates leading in and out of the structure. You must also wash your feet before entering. People giggled at us the whole time as they normally did only now with even more amusement and curiosity as they watched the only white people in the temple observe their costumes and enter their temple, they wanted to take pictures of and with us and we happily let them.When Blake and I got inside the temple we quickly stood and observed the constant ceremony being practiced at the bottom level of the temple looked at the spiraling staircases at either side of the room then back at each other, we simultaneously took the exits closest to our side of the room and met each other racing past the people on the stairs at level 2 and again at level 3 when we existed out of the spiral and out on to the roof of the shrine. There we looked out against the even higher walls of the temple and at all the barefoot and hooded peoples of the holy promenade. We jostled and joked about whether or not wed be able to make it to the water safely from the roof then existed the shrine in time to meet the other waiting for us at the exit.We left the temple and watched Nimla and Vinay eat their lunch, we were hungry to of course but both Blake and I were rather broke at this point. So Blake and I decided to leave and meet them back at the hotel, but on the way back our clever sense of direction took us on a city wide tour before we finally found our way back to the room.We had climbed the vast and chilly mountain peeks of Surkundi, Faced the proud and wicked drug dealing descendants of Alexander the Greats Army, driven the treacherous road to Leh in the dead of night and powered our way to the highest road on earth and much much more together but now it was time at last to say goodbye to our last remaining compatriots and set off for the train station. A self pronounced Roman Catholic Indian man who was staying at our hotel gave us directions and information needed to get there and we were on our way, but not before getting some more coke! We went back to the Temple and got some semi cold cokes when a group of men gathered around two other men at the center of the square entering the temple.They were berating them with shouts and then with blows from fists and sticks, a boy next to us explained that the man and his accomplice were thief's, he then handed me a coke, which I accepted thankfully, and he smiled brightly while looking up at me as though nothing out of the ordinary was taking place. Blake came back a second later with our cokes and not to be rude I chugged the coke I got from the boy and the one blake had gotten for me all at once. So basically I chugged 2 warmish cokes in the span of 3 minutes, after which I wasn't feeling all that great.Then we left and found a group of tuk tuk drivers to bargain with on the price to get to the train station. After a good 10 minutes of bargaining, then walking away, being chased and hassled by them, then walking away again we finally found a driver willing to drive us for 40 rupees (The price of which we had gotten from the Roman Catholic dude at the Hotel) =D.At the station behind the ticket counter were these three guys, they said there were no tickets at first then told us to come in the booth, we did and then they offered us chewing masala, I wanted to know what it was and they assured us it wasn't tobacco or anything bad. (I would later learn it was actually the Indian Version of chewing tobacco >.<) After putting it in my mouth I soon began feeling light headed and soon after that terribly sick.They felt sorry and wished us well our "impossible" yet made "possible.. somehow" railway tickets. Once on the train we met many interesting characters including an IT hardware techy and a Math professor and his granddaughter whom later would share his dinner with us. I tried to sleep but was restless with the thoughts of the future and so stood watch over us as we journeyed further and further back into the depths of the heat and humidity of the South. Now we are alone without the help of Raveesh or Vinay, once again at the mercy of our wits and the ability of our character, I watched the bright full moon between the bars of the train carriage and thought of this and of all the things we had set out to do on our journey, I went over and over my life and what I had wanted it to amount to, where I had been and where I might be going, I thought and wondered all the night through as Blake slept soundly in his rocking bunk.