Fozzie Bhai in Punjab; 'Everyone Warned Me About Punjab. They Were Wrong'

By:  Lajwinder Kaur September 17th 2026 05:30 PM -- Updated: September 17th 2026 05:39 PM

I almost didn’t go.

For close to four years now, my life has played out partly online — an audience I started building on X, back when most people still called it Twitter, and grew mostly through my content. Whenever Punjab came up in conversation, a familiar warning often followed: be careful there. It’s not like the rest of India. Watch yourself. Keep your head on a swivel. Not everyone said it. But enough people did that a small, persistent hesitation had settled into me long before I ever booked the flight.

Then the opportunity came anyway, and I went

Within an hour of landing, the hesitation was gone. It was replaced by something I had not expected at all: a genuinely good feeling, one that deepened when I reached the Fern Residency Hotel. The rooms were spotless. The rooftop pool was empty so I stripped down to my underwear and had the whole thing to myself, floating under an open sky and wondering what, exactly, I had been warned about — and what was still to come. That first evening, still easing into the city, I found a street vendor selling stuffed kulcha: potato and onion mash, folded into bread with a crazy volume of spice. Not the kind of spice that gives you flop sweat. The kind that sends your tongue into another dimension. We filmed a bit of content for a few thousand views and no real plan — one of those small, unforgettable moments that ends up becoming the truest way into a new place. We had not even reached the biggest thing on the day’s list yet

Gold on Water Later 

That same evening, we took an auto-rickshaw as far as it could go, then walked the rest of the way to Sri Harmandir Sahib — the Golden Temple — through pouring rain. The stone path underfoot had become a sheet of shifting light. We passed little market stalls, all of them moving at their own unhurried pace beneath tarps and umbrellas, until the rain thinned and then stopped altogether. The energy of the street softened as we got closer, as though everyone within a hundred metres of the gate had agreed, without saying it aloud, to slow down. When arriving at the entrance gate, you tie a bandana over your hair as Sikh custom requires, wash your feet at the entrance pool, and when you enter the complex you see it: the temple sitting on its own lake of still, holy water, covered in more gold than I had ever seen in my life. Photographs do not prepare you for it. Nothing does I walked down onto the parikrama, the sacred path that wraps around the Amrit Sarovar — the pool from which Amritsar draws its name. I crouched at the water’s edge, scooped up what I could in my hands and flicked it over my head. Afterwards, I sat on the top step of the tank, taking it all in, until one of the temple’s spear-carrying guards approached. I had drifted too close to the edge. He tapped the butt of his spear against the marble floor and said a couple of words in Punjabi that did not need translating. It was over in a second, and it was not unkind.  It was, if anything, humbling — a reminder that this beauty comes with a discipline that I was a guest inside of, not an owner of

Later, in the langar — the temple’s free community kitchen — I watched volunteers serve food to a room so full it seemed to have no edges. Then my photographer and I wandered into the dishwashing area, found an open spot on the line, and began scrubbing steel plates and bowls alongside everyone else. No one had stopped us, and no one told us to leave. Only a week later did I learn that we were technically meant to ask before joining in.  Nobody seemed to mind that we hadn't. What strikes you, standing in it, is that the entire operation — the cooking, serving, endless washing — runs on volunteers. Thousands of people give their hours to keep it breathing. On the way out, we found a tea station with large rectangular vats from which people were filling bowls, and joined the line ourselves. That was where we met an elderly Sikh man who fell into conversation with us. He told us he had lived his whole life in Punjab and travelled almost nowhere, completely committed to his own cause

The first thing I noticed was his kara, the steel bangle worn by many Sikhs. He was not wearing one. He was wearing forty, stacked up both forearms. I asked him why. “Each one represents a moment in my life where Waheguru was completely present in my actions” Forty circles, each without beginning or end. We said our goodbyes, and I offered the only Punjabi I had: “Sat Sri Akal.” — God is the ultimate truth.

Near the water stands an old jujube tree, ringed by raised marble stonework: the Dukh Bhanjani Beri, the “remover of suffering”. Local tradition tells of Bibi Rajni, who left her leper husband resting beneath it while she searched for food. He watched a black crow dip into the pond beside the tree and rise up white. He bathed himself in the water and emerged cured. The tree was named, and that same pond became the Amrit Sarovar. I ended the night the way most people in Amritsar seem to end a good night: with a lassi, a traditional yogurt based drink. A nearby vendor turned the handle of an enormous silver churn, poured the drink into a heavy brass cup nearly the size of my forearm, and finished it with a dollop of cream the size of my fist

Without exaggeration, it was the best lassi I have ever had.

Silver Doors, Gold Ceiling

The next morning, we rented a scooty and rode a few kilometers to Durgiana Tirath, a Hindu temple complex that many visitors to Amritsar never hear about. I will say this: zipping through the streets on a rental scooty is, in my opinion, the best way to get around an Indian city. It is not necessarily the safest, but it is the most alive. Inside the complex are temples and shrines in every direction. One pays homage to Amarnath Cave in Jammu and Kashmir, with a Shiva lingam carved from quartz crystal. Near the site known as Bada Hanuman Temple, tall doors carry scenes of Rama and Hanuman from the Ramayana. A large wall is covered with the name “Ram”, written again and again by pilgrims.

I found a small pot of saffron-orange clay — the same colour used in Hanuman rituals and for tilak — and added my own small mark in English to an empty pocket on the wall. Some people will say that was inappropriate, and perhaps they are right. At the time, I thought: God speaks all languages. Some would say it is inappropriate. I would say that God speaks all languages. At least that is my take on it. On the grounds stands a tree that local tradition says is where Rama’s twin sons, Luv and Kush, once tied Hanuman. I was told it came directly from the Ramayana. It does not. I checked after coming home and found that the story belongs to the Puranas, a later layer of Hindu scripture rather than the epic itself. It's a small correction, but I think it matters: even the stories that feel the oldest have their own histories

The Durgiana Tirath itself mirrors the Golden Temple almost exactly — a causeway, a sarovar, a marble shrine rising from the centre of the tank. Its upper section is plated in gold. However, it’s entrance doors are silver-plated and worked with images of Durga, Ganesh and other Hindu deities, which is why locals call it the Silver Temple. Past those silver doors, a second, inner set of gold — with images of Durga, Vishnu and Lakshmi, guarding the sanctum itself. I sat before them on a thin cotton mat for nearly twenty minutes, in quiet prayer to Durga, gazing at the intricate work above and around me, and I did not want to leave. On the way out, I walked the parikrama — the slow clockwise circuit of the shrine — and only later learned more of the place’s history: its older traditions reaching back centuries and rebuilt in the early 1920s, its foundation stone laid by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, the freedom fighter and educationist who founded the famous Banaras Hindu University. A temple built, in other words, by a man who spent his life building schools

We ate at Kulcha Land on Ranjit Avenue after that. The Amritsari kulcha was the best of the trip — crisp enough that the sound of it breaking became its own small event. The paneer was a close second. The lassi was good too, however, the night before set the standard.  The markets that afternoon were of a different kind of intensity. Vendors called out with a directness that startled me at first. There was nothing hostile in it; just an energy I was not used to. The more time I spent among them, the more I read it as pride. Punjabi people work hard. They carry themselves with it. Even the hard sell of a bazaar stall had a kind of dignity once I stopped bracing against it. 

A Low Place

The next morning, before the biggest event of the trip, I went to Jallianwala Bagh.

I felt eyes on me immediately — not the curious kind I’d grown used to in places tourists rarely reach, but something closer to discomfort.

I can only speak to what I felt, not to what anyone else was thinking.  I also went in with only a rough understanding of what had happened there.

In 1919, under the Rowlatt Act — which gave British authorities sweeping powers to arrest suspected agitators without warrant and imprison them without trial. A peaceful crowd gathered in this walled garden. It was Baisakhi, with people in the city for the spring festival as well as the protest, and many were unaware that public assembly had just been banned. British troops under General Reginald Dyer sealed the only exit and opened fire without warning. They fired 1,650 rounds. The British record put the dead at under four hundred. Indian accounts, then and since, say well over a thousand

You can still see where the bullets struck the walls, marked off in places. There is a well where people jumped to escape the gunfire and were killed by the fall itself, or by each other in the crush at the bottom.

I do not know how to describe the feeling in that place except to say it sat with me for hours afterwards, low and heavy in a way I had not expected. Whether that was history speaking, or simply what a person feels standing where an unbelievable tragedy happened, I cannot say for certain. I only know I felt it

From there, a short walk away — just off Golden Temple Road — is the Partition Museum, housed in the old red-brick Town Hall: a colonial building that once served as British headquarters with a police station, law courts and a jail. It was strange to see those same rain-slicked stones from my first night standing dry and stark in the daylight, the deep red of the brick suddenly the loudest thing on the street.

When I visited, foreign entry was 250 rupees. No cameras, no phones; the rules became strict the moment you stepped inside. Then you understood why. The walls held original prints, documents and personal effects from one of the largest and bloodiest migrations in human history: the 1947 tearing-apart of India into what became India, West Pakistan and East Pakistan, told through the photographs and belongings of people who lived through it.

In one case sat the British Army’s own record of Jallianwala Bagh, typed out in cool, administrative lines. It logged the afternoon of 13 April 1919 almost by the clock: the crowd “dispersed by fire”, 1,650 rounds spent, casualties estimated at between 200 and 300 killed, before noting, without apparent irony, that all was “quiet during the night”. Standing where I had stood an hour earlier and reading a massacre reduced to a tidy column of times and figures was its own kind of chill. The British record put the dead in the low hundreds. Indian accounts, then and since, say the true number was far higher. I left the museum quieter than I went in. I also noticed, without thinking much of it at the time, a faint scratch beginning at the back of my throat — the first small sign of something that would catch up with me properly in a couple of days. 

The Border Roars

That heaviness did not survive the drive out. 

Once the city gave way to open country along the historic Grand Trunk Road — the old route that once connected into the wider Silk Road network — something in the air genuinely changed. The land turned an almost unreal green with farmland, the road opened up, and whatever weight I had been carrying simply lifted.

At the Attari–Wagah border, the first thing I noticed was that only the Indian flag was flying, it struck me as quietly funny rather than anything more at the time — Pakistan’s side stood flagless for the remainder of the evening.

After parking, we walked towards the main stadium past hundreds of people gathered around the snack vendors lining the road. We managed a quick look through the Border Security Force museum: weapons, technology, displays of service and sacrifice. It was the first time I'd stood at a shared land border with another nation, Australia is surrounded by ocean, afterall. And it was a new feeling I had not experienced before. Nationalism became my central thought.

Each day before sunset, the thundering cheer of national pride commences.

What followed was one of the most alive experiences of the entire trip: the Beating Retreat ceremony. It has run here daily since 1959, by joint agreement of both governments, carried out by India’s Border Security Force and the Pakistan Rangers. 

The soldiers are trained for it specifically: high-kicking steps, boots snapping above head height, flying kicks, sharp turns, full-chested displays of strength. The crowd was electric. Women were dancing. Music was pumping. Vendors were moving through the stands selling my favourite butterscotch Cornetto.

What makes it strange, and rather wonderful, is that the ceremony is designed to be two things at once: a display of rivalry and a gesture of brotherhood. They rehearse it together, but the competitiveness runs to the absurd. In 2017, India raised a 110-metre flagpole here; Pakistan promptly answered with one of 122 metres. So to see the empty pole, the sparse crowd and non-existent music on their side struck me as comical. 

I had no real idea what to expect coming in. I left already thinking about when I would come back. 

We closed the evening at a place called Charming Chicken, suggested by a local, and it absolutely was — American-style fried chicken with a desi twist, plus butter chicken with garlic butter naan good enough to make the rest of the trip’s meals compete for second place.

The Fever and the Blessing

By that evening, I had started to feel unwell. Nothing dramatic at first — just the early edge of something.

Through the night, it hit: fever, aches, the kind of exhaustion that makes a bed feel like the only sensible place in the world.

By mid-day, I had taken the paracetamol I had and, against my better judgement, ventured out anyway. We rode to Valmiki Tirath along the same Grand Trunk Road.

Local tradition holds that it was the ashram where the sage Valmiki composed the Ramayana, and where Sita gave birth to Lord Rama’s twin sons, Luv and Kush. It is also tied, in local telling, to the story of the sons capturing Rama’s sacrificial horse and even Hanuman himself.

The trip had carried me from one end of that story to the other without my noticing. 

We left our shoes at the gate and walked barefoot. Two security guards were on duty and seemed surprised to see us arrive — clearly, not many foreigners make it out here — then greeted us with smiles, Namastes and pointed directions to the temple itself.

We thanked them and promptly ignored the directions: it was right in front of us. The complex is vast, comparable in scale to the Golden Temple’s, and functions as a working ashram as much as a shrine. Volunteers maintain the grounds.

Food is grown. Milk is produced. A covered walkway runs the full parikrama around the central tank, and two enormous red Hanuman statues face each other from across it. 

We were invited to eat by the temples Chief Pandit, and afterwards he sent us to walk the grounds — A small temple marking where Sita is said to have given birth, the room where Luv and Kush were educated, the well where Sita drew water, and a jyoti — a pit of embers which a priest told us had burned unbroken for thousands of years. He marked ash on my forehead and neck. I accepted the rest into my palms and consumed it as instructed, only learning afterwards that I was not meant to touch my hand to my mouth.

The last place we visited was the Valmiki temple itself, at the centre of the complex, sitting on a sarovar.

The tank had been drained for restoration. On the entrance of the bridge was a poster I had not expected: a TikTok logo with a large X through it. I was still laughing when I nearly went over in a puddle left by the morning’s rain.

Inside were deep red floors, a vast seven-tier quartz chandelier under repair, and at the centre a great gold Valmiki in meditation: writing instrument in his right hand, a book draped across his leg, his pedestal heaped with flowers. On the floor before him sat a glass case filled entirely with toy cars. There was no explanation. I still have no idea why they were there, though I like to think it had something to do with the transport of knowledge. When I returned to the Pandit, I touched his feet without thinking. He placed a hand on my shoulder and tapped my head with a mor pankh, an instrument set with a peacock feather, while reciting a mantra I did not understand.

Then he said, plainly: “I know you’re sick. I can tell that you’re really sick right now. I want to assure you that after today, tomorrow, you will be healed."

We rode back towards the city as the fever climbed again. I turned his words over the whole way, torn between comfort and being unconvinced. By then I was almost falling off the scooter from how badly the illness had gripped me. I could not take content creation seriously for the rest of the day. We returned the rental scooty and headed back to the hotel. I do not know what happened that night. I only know that, at some point, I fell into something closer to a trance than sleep. Hours of it. My Apple Watch later showed a resting heart rate of 140. 

When I woke at half past three in the morning, my mattress, blanket and pillow were soaked through. I flipped the mattress around, changed the pillow, took a hot shower and went back to sleep. 

A few hours later, on almost no rest, I woke feeling rejuvenated.

Whatever it was, it was gone. I am not going to tell you what that was. I do not know. I am only telling you what happened.

What Punjab Left Me With

Being sick did cost me a few things. There were places I had marked and never reached: Sadda Pind, a living recreation of a traditional Punjabi village where crafts, folk performances and food of Punjab are kept alive in one place, and Gobindgarh Fort, the eighteenth-century stronghold of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. I ran out of days and health before I ran out of Punjab, which is the surest sign I know that a place has more to give. 

So I flew back to New Delhi with two overpriced cold coffees from the airport, a two-hour delay on the tarmac, and a version of Punjab in my head that had nothing to do with the one I had been warned about.

What I found instead was a place that fed me before it asked my name; that carried its worst history and its most electric joy within an hour’s drive of each other; and that, somewhere in a temple I had not planned to visit, with a man I had never met knew something about me I had not said out loud.

I had a great time here. I will return, I am sure. 

Punjab is amazing. 

~ Daniel D’Unienville aka Fozzie