CHAPTER XXI
AMRITSAR
HERE was a combination hotel and dak bangla under one roof at Amritsar that was as amusing as anything in comic opera. We arrived at the dak bangla late at night, and moved to the hotel in the morning, by merely crossing the hall. Instead of being served in our own cold, white vault of a bedchamber in the bangla, we dined in the lofty, drafty banquet-hall of the hotel quite as comfortably as if in the train-shed of a railway station on a winter night. All the doors of the place were besieged by insistent touts who sang the same song, "Please come my shop. Please buy my shop," thrust greasy cards at us, clung to the carriage-steps, and outdid their tribesmen elsewhere.
Amritsar, as the holy city of the Sikhs, has an importance and a character distinct from all other places. It is as large a city as Delhi, and for ages has been a great trade-center, lying on the main caravan routes from Central Asia and Kashmir. The streets show a mixture of races, and for color and picturesqueness the bazaars equal those of Lahore. Nearly every man wore a chudda of either
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