Punjab by Road: Amritsar, Wagah and the Weekend Nobody Plans Properly

Punjab is the shortest big trip in this collection and the one most often done badly. Amritsar is about 230 km from Chandigarh and 450 km from Delhi, on genuinely fast four-lane road the whole way. A weekend covers it comfortably. And yet the standard version of this trip has people arriving at the Golden Temple at noon, at Wagah after the gates have closed, and eating at the wrong dhaba.

This is a guide about timing more than routing, because in Punjab the routing is easy.

The drive

• Chandigarh to Amritsar - about 230 km via Ludhiana and Jalandhar on NH-44, four to four and a half hours. Fast, flat, and heavy with trucks.
• Delhi to Amritsar - about 450 km, seven to eight hours on the same highway through Karnal and Ludhiana.
• Amritsar to Wagah - 30 km, about an hour, and the last stretch is slow with ceremony traffic.
• Amritsar to Anandpur Sahib - about 200 km, four hours, and a sensible route home to Chandigarh rather than retracing NH-44.

Winter fog is the one real hazard - see the fog section in the Uttar Pradesh guide, which applies identically across the Punjab plains in late December and January. Do not start before it lifts.

The Golden Temple, at the right hours

Harmandir Sahib is open twenty-four hours and it is a completely different place depending on when you walk in. Two windows are worth arranging your whole trip around:

• Before dawn, for the palki sahib ceremony when the Guru Granth Sahib is carried into the temple. The complex is quiet, the marble is cold, and this is the version of the place people remember.
• After dark, when the gold is lit and reflected in the sarovar. Busier than dawn but the most striking.
• Avoid late morning to late afternoon, when the queue across the causeway to the inner sanctum can be two hours in heat.

Practical points: heads must be covered (scarves are available free at the entrance), shoes are left at the free counter, and photography is not permitted inside the inner sanctum. The Guru-ka-Langar serves tens of thousands of free meals a day and visitors are welcome to eat and equally welcome to help wash dishes - doing so for half an hour is the most worthwhile thing most visitors do in Amritsar.

Jallianwala Bagh is a two-minute walk from the temple entrance. It takes half an hour and it should not be skipped for being small.

Wagah, and the queue

The Beating Retreat ceremony at the Attari-Wagah border is at sunset, which means roughly 5.15pm in winter and 6.15pm in summer, and the timings shift with the season. The mistake everyone makes is arriving on time.

• Leave Amritsar at least three hours before the ceremony. Seating is unreserved and fills from the moment the gates open.
• Carry ID, and carry as little else as possible - bags, and often phones and cameras beyond a certain size, are not permitted past security and the cloakroom arrangements are informal.
• The ceremony is cancelled without notice for weather and for diplomatic reasons. Treat it as a bonus rather than the reason for the trip.
• On the way back, the road out is one long jam. Factor in an hour more than the drive should take.

The rest of Amritsar

• Partition Museum - in the old Town Hall, and the best museum in Punjab by a wide margin. Two hours, and it will change how you read the rest of the trip.
• Gobindgarh Fort - restored, a bit theme-park in places, decent for an evening.
• Durgiana Temple - architecturally modelled on Harmandir Sahib, much quieter.
• Ram Bagh and the Maharaja Ranjit Singh museum - the Sikh empire's summer palace and its collection.
• The old city bazaars - Hall Bazaar and the lanes off it, best walked in the early evening.

The food, which is half the point

Amritsar is a food destination in a way that justifies the drive on its own. The specific things, rather than a general recommendation:

• Amritsari kulcha with chole, from a kulcha-wala with a tandoor rather than a restaurant. Breakfast, not dinner.
• Amritsari fish - river fish in a gram-flour batter, sold from stalls rather than sit-down places.
• Kesar da Dhaba and Bharawan da Dhaba - old-city institutions, heavy, worth it once.
• The dhaba route home - the stretch of NH-44 between Jalandhar and Ludhiana has the best truck dhabas in India. Stop at one with the most trucks parked outside; that is genuinely the correct selection method.

Extending the trip

• Anandpur Sahib - 200 km from Amritsar, and the Virasat-e-Khalsa museum there is architecturally extraordinary. A natural stop on the way back to Chandigarh.
• Kapurthala - the Jagatjit Palace, built in the style of Versailles by a maharaja who admired France. An hour out of Jalandhar and almost nobody goes.
• Sultanpur Lodhi - quiet, historic, and 40 km from Kapurthala.
• Onward to Himachal - Amritsar to Dharamshala is about 200 km and four hours, which makes a Punjab-plus-Kangra week very easy. The Himachal road trip guide picks up from there.
• Onward to Kashmir - Amritsar to Jammu is about 215 km, so this also works as the first leg of a Kashmir trip.

Season

• October to March - the season. Cool to cold, clear, and comfortable for walking the old city. Watch for fog in late December and January.
• April and May - hot, 38-43°C, and Baisakhi in mid-April is worth planning around if you want the harvest festival at full volume.
• June to September - hot and then humid. The monsoon is moderate here and the fields are spectacularly green, which is an underrated reason to come.

Money and groups

This is the cheapest trip in this collection. Fuel for 500-odd kilometres, one or two nights of accommodation, and food that is inexpensive even when you eat well. Because the fuel and the vehicle are fixed, a full car makes it very cheap indeed - a Chandigarh-Amritsar weekend split four ways is one of the best-value trips in north India.

It is also the ideal first trip with people you have not travelled with before: it is short, the roads are easy, and nothing about it is committing. Have a look at upcoming trips for Amritsar weekends with seats going spare, or the travel clubs that run it regularly. If it is your first time sharing a car with strangers, your first group trip with strangers covers the etiquette, and how to split trip costs fairly covers the money.

For a shorter weekend from the same starting point, the Chandigarh weekend getaways guide has the options within three hours.