The Golden Temple, Amritsar (Punjab), India

Darbar Sahib
The Golden Temple
It was time for me to wash off some of my sins and hence I planned a trip to The Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, also known as Harmandir Sahib/Darbar Sahib. I further planned to visit The Holy Shrine of Vaishno Devi in Jammu. It was a family trip and we left in the night to reach Amritsar early in the morning. Except for some tea and snacks, we didn't take much stoppages to keep up with the schedule and by morning 8am, we reached The Golden Temple in Amritsar. We parked our vehicle and the temple was still few kilometers away from the parking zone so we hired a Tonga to reach the temple premises. We could have chosen auto rickshaw as well, but why not travel in an old fashion way?


Temple's entrance
One of the entrance to the Temple
The temple has an entrance from all the four sides which symbolizes openness of Sikhs towards all people and religions. I have been here before but it was first visit of my wife and the excitement and glow on her face was clearly visible. I was still bit sleepy, but splash of cold water on my face from the sarovar of The Golden Temple rejuvenated me. We quickly had a bath in the sarovar and got ready to pay our visit inside the temple. It is believed that the water of the sarovar has healing properties which cures many diseases. The construction of the temple was mainly intended so that people from all walks of life can come and worship the God equally.

The Queue
The temple is located in the center of the sarovar and the queue was quite long which literally gave me shivers, but someone suggested that the queue moves fast enough and will take only few minutes. Being a weekday, I was not expecting the crowd at all, but the guy was right and the queue did move pretty fast. The interesting fact is that over 100,000 people visit the temple daily. Also, within the grounds of the Temple is the Langar, or free kitchen. Visitors can eat here for free; by some estimates 50,000-100,000 people eat here per day.

Soon, we were inside the temple and for few minutes I was staring at the amazing architecture and design inside the temple. The queue kept moving and we paid respects and bowed our head and soon we were out of the main temple. The Prasad distributed there tasted amazingly as ever. We rested there for some time while I pulled out my digital camera and flaunted as a DSLR and did some photography.



It was time for us to leave for our next destination, With a refreshing cup of tea and nice breakfast, we left Amritsar and continued our journey to reach Katra, The holy shrine of Vaishno Devi.

6 comments:

Like this post? Say it here!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...