Mission: Golden Temple

You would think that two hours would be plenty of time to navigate a line. Earlier that day I had met a French student named Henri in the dorms at the Golden Temple complex, and we had spent the day seeing the sights, navigating streets flooded by the morning rains, and sampling local sweets (it must be good to be a dentist in Amritsar). Now, after watching the sun set on the Golden Temple, we wanted to get inside the thing before I caught a bus and he a train back to Delhi. What we hadn't planned on was getting locked in line at the exact time when the major Sikh service of the day started.

I had been pushed with the crowd a little farther up, and passed my journal back to Henri to get his contact info so we could meet up in Delhi. As the only other white person in line, people got the message pretty quickly. Trying to get it back to me, he got the attention of one of the Sikh guards, explaining that he had a train to catch and so couldn't wait in line any longer. The guard told him to just hop over the barrier, bypass the line, and go check it out. Henri asked, "Can she come too?" The kind man smiled and nodded, so over I clambered, skirt and all.

The line was at a dead standstill as the service was in full swing. Loudspeakers broadcast a man singing from their holy book, and the crowd started chanting and singing along, closing their eyes in prayer. As we walked up the causeway to the temple, everyone kneeled down, then settled themselves in to listen to the prayers. Thankfully Sikhism is known as a tolerant and inclusive religion, because a couple foreigners wandering around the temple in the middle of a service has to be taboo.

The temple itself is beautiful, covered in gold leaf, decorated with mirrors, and inlaid with delicate stone patterns. A pair of marble stairs twist up the three levels, and Henri and I found ourselves on the roof, looking out between golden spires. The surrounding courtyard was full of people listening to the chanting, and it was pretty incredible to be at the center of all that energy. We quietly padded back down the stairs, past the seated worshippers, and across the causeway, thanking the kind guard profusely before venturing back into the chaos of the city.