The Golden Temple: How did we almost miss this?
“It’s better than the Taj Mahal.” We heard this from not one, not two, but at least five different people while we were in India.
We were incredulous. The Taj was magnificent. But we had a couple extra days to kill, we could easily reach Amritsar (the Punjabi city where the Golden Temple is located) from Dharamsala, and we had to see for ourselves if this outlandish claim was true.
The Golden Temple is a 440-year-old building and a holy place for the Sikh religion. The actual gold-plated temple, floating in the middle of a square artificial lake (the Sarovar, or “Pool of the Nectar of Immortality”), houses the holiest text of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib. The Sarovar is surrounded by white marble buildings that contain smaller shrines and plaques to Sikh martyrs and fighters.
The Golden Temple also hosts a troupe of talented musicians who sing beautiful hymns and verses from the holy text in 8-hour shifts, and their music is broadcast around the temple.
You can’t visit the Golden Temple without a visit to their “community kitchen” for langar, or the communal meal. Visitors are given a clean steel tray, bowl, and spoon and then led into a large room where they sit on the floor and eat a simple, vegetarian, surprisingly delicious meal next to complete strangers. The Golden Temple website explains the egalitarian theory: “It is here that all people high or low, rich or poor, male or female, all sit in the same pangat (literally “row” or “line”) to share and enjoy the food together.” The community kitchen serves 50,000 meals per day. And here’s the astounding thing: the meal is completely free and the kitchen is staffed almost exclusively by volunteers. Volunteers prep and cook the food, serve it, and wash the dishes! What an amazing way to show devotion to other people and to God.
The Golden Temple is probably the best place for people-watching we’ve ever been. There are orange-and-blue clad guards with enormous turbans and menacing daggers and sabers pacing the grounds. (Jordan: “That’s my next gameday outfit!” The best part: those men are known as “the crocodiles.“).
There are entire families bathing in the Sarovar, the devout emerging from the temple with tears streaming down their faces, a parade of the unfamiliar, the exotic, the mystifying. We can’t write about Amritsar without mentioning the incredibly kind and inquisitive people we met there. We had whole families detain us for conversations, pictures, and swapping Facebook information. We shook endless hands, were the receivers of multiple kind bows and “namastes.” And we were such an oddity to the children we met. One little girl patted my arm and said, “Hello, lady. You are very pale!” Another little boy was eating a ripe mango and staring at me as we passed. I smiled and waved at him and he was so startled he dropped both his jaw and his mango. (Or do I really look that scary without make-up?)
As Jordan and I were strolling past the Sarovar at night, the Golden Temple glowing on the water, listening to the haunting music, full of food and the kindness of strangers, we thought: “This is the best of India.” Good food, kind people, exotic sights, gorgeous buildings, and a magical, mystical vibe. This was not just our favorite stop in India, it was one of the highlights of our entire trip. How did we almost miss this?
But … is it better than the Taj Mahal?
The Taj is still an awe-inspiring, beautiful building and a “must” for anyone’s India itinerary. Yet the entire experience we had at the Golden Temple was infinitely more special. There’s a real feeling of peace here. Our affable guesthouse owner, Mr. Singh (everyone here is called Mr. Singh), told us that, “If you go to the Golden Temple and close your eyes, listen to the music, you will feel as if you are in heaven.” It’s a place dedicated to worship, to equality, and to love of your fellow man. What could be more beautiful than that?
