Left at 3am this morning for the golden temple, the hotel was only a short ride so didn’t take us long to get there.
We checked in our shoes at the drop off point and made our way to one of the four gates that surround the temple itself, four gates symbolising that the temple is equally accessible and open to everyone regardless of faith, caste and religion.
The temple is truly breathtaking, at this time of the morning the place exudes a serene and tranquil atmosphere, Sikh men were already stirring and starting to bathe in the holy water that surrounds the temple, lots of people also lay asleep in the grounds.
We had come to see the book ceremony, every morning at around 4 am the book is moved from its resting place and taken into the golden temple itself. It is believed that the book is a living entity and that each morning it should be woken up and taken to the temple, at night it is returned to its resting place until the next morning, there is quite a procession that surrounds the movement of the holy book, moves pretty fast too!
The temple serves over three thousand meals everyday through its kitchens, a staggering feat. Huge pots were already lit in the kitchens in preparation for the first meals of the day. Everyone is welcome here, one can come and sit and eat in the large dining room. All they ask is that you do something to help, maybe a bit of washing up, or help making the chapatis, everything is run by volunteers who tithe both their time and their money. Even at 3 am in the morning I was offered sweet tea.
We also went to look at the Temple museum. A stark contrast to the serene and tranquil environment outside! Lots of paintings of Sikh martyrs being boiled in vats and cut in half, also lots of paintings of great bloody Moghul battles.
There were some particularly grisly photographs of dead Sikh men hung on the wall, all died in the shooting in the 1980’s when Indira Ghandi ordered troops to storm the temple as Sikh guerillas were seeking refuge inside the building, 600 hundred people were killed as a result.
