Three days in Amritsar: the most generous building in the world
Two nights within walking distance of the Golden Temple. A free kitchen that never closes, a massacre nobody has forgotten, and a border ceremony that has to be seen.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Amritsar
- Places
- 7 across 3 days
Almost everybody who comes to Amritsar comes for one building, and it justifies the trip on its own. The Golden Temple stands on a platform in the middle of a rectangular tank, reached by a causeway, gold above and white marble below, with the reflection doubling it in every photograph ever taken of the place.
What makes it extraordinary is not the gold. It is that the complex has four doors, one on each side, to say that anyone may enter from any direction; that the kitchen behind it feeds anybody who turns up, free, all day and half the night, entirely on volunteer labour; and that nobody asks who you are at any point.
The rest of the city is a working Punjabi town with very good food, a memorial to one of the worst days of the British Raj, and a border half an hour west where two armies stage a competitive flag-lowering every evening in front of a stadium crowd.
Highlights
- The tank before dawn, and again under floodlight at eleven, which are the two best hours
- Eating in the langar hall with a few thousand strangers, for nothing
- The garden where troops fired on a trapped crowd in 1919, with the bullet holes still in the wall
- The border ceremony at Attari, which is high theatre performed by real soldiers
- A nine-storey tower a few minutes' walk away with the whole complex laid out below it
Where to stay
Amritsar, two nights
The old city is compact and everything except the border is within about two kilometres of the temple. Stay inside that circle: being able to walk over at four in the morning and again after dinner is what makes two nights here worth more than one long day.
The temple itself runs pilgrim lodgings around the complex, including rooms set aside for foreign visitors, which are basic, extremely cheap and an experience in themselves. Ordinary hotels sit a few streets back.
The area immediately around the complex was rebuilt as a pedestrian plaza a few years ago, which made it much easier to walk and considerably less like the old city it replaced.
Day by day
Day 1 in Amritsar
The Golden Temple, and dinner with several thousand people
Amritsar's airport is twenty minutes north of the centre and takes flights from Delhi, the Gulf and, in season, direct from the UK. Whatever time you land, go straight to the temple.
The approach is deliberately unimpressive: you come through a clock-tower gate, down a flight of steps, and the whole complex opens up below you all at once, which is the entire architectural idea. The building is lower than the ground around it, because you go down to it rather than up.
Walk the marble parikrama clockwise round the tank, past pilgrims bathing, past the seat of the Sikh temporal authority on the western side, and join the causeway queue if it is short. Then eat.
The langar hall barely stops, and joining it is not a tourist activity: you queue with everyone else, take a tray, sit in a row on the floor, and volunteers come down the line with buckets of dal and stacks of chapati. It is over in fifteen minutes and it will stay with you.
- 17:00
Golden Temple Complex
HistoricOpen twenty-four hours, free, and best at either end of the day. Head covered, shoes off, feet washed at the entrance. Walk the whole way round the tank before you queue for the causeway.
.jpg%3Fwidth%3D500)
- 20:00
Langar Ghar
VisitThe free kitchen, which serves anybody who walks in and never closes. Collect a steel tray at the door and follow the crowd upstairs. Wash your own plate on the way out or hand it to the stack.
With more time: Come back at about half past ten at night, when the Guru Granth Sahib is carried in procession from the shrine to the council building for the night. It happens every evening, the crowd is much smaller than in the day, and the floodlighting on the water is at its best.
Day 2 in Amritsar
1919, the Sikh museum, and the border at sunset
Two minutes from the temple gate is a walled garden with one narrow entrance. On 13 April 1919 a crowd of several thousand gathered here, mostly for a festival, in defiance of a ban on public meetings. Troops under a British officer blocked the entrance and fired into them for about ten minutes. The official count was 379 dead; Indian estimates ran to three times that. Many were killed jumping into the well to escape.
The bullet holes are still in the brick and are marked. It takes half an hour, it is not a comfortable half hour, and it is the reason a great deal of what followed happened.
Afterwards, the museum inside the temple complex, which tells the Sikh story mostly through paintings of martyrdoms and is unflinching in a way that western museums are not.
In the afternoon, out to the border. Two sets of soldiers in enormous fanned headdresses kick, stamp and glare at each other through a gate while several thousand people on each side shout. It is absurd, genuinely thrilling, and has been running since 1959.
- 09:30
Jallianwala Bagh
HistoricThe 1919 massacre site, now a memorial garden. The narrow entrance the troops blocked, the marked bullet holes and the well are all still there. Free, and busy with Indian visitors rather than foreign ones.
- 12:00
Central Sikh Museum
CultureInside the temple complex, up a staircase most visitors walk past. Paintings of the gurus and of executions, weapons, and the personal effects of Sikh leaders. Free, and about an hour.
- 13:30
Lunch in the old city
EatAmritsari kulcha, stuffed and baked in a tandoor and served with chole and a lump of butter, is the local breakfast and lunch. The fried fish is the other thing the city is known for.
- 15:00
Flag lowering ceremony
OtherHalf an hour west at the Attari crossing, every evening before sunset. Leave by three, take no bag, and expect a stadium crowd. It is patriotic theatre and both sides are extremely good at it.
With more time: The Partition Museum, in the old town hall five minutes from the temple, is the only museum anywhere devoted to the 1947 division of the subcontinent, and it is built almost entirely out of survivors' testimony. Allow two hours and go before Jallianwala Bagh rather than after, if you are doing both in a day.
Day 3 in Amritsar
A view from above, a fort, and out
Start on the roof. A nine-storey octagonal tower stands a few minutes from the tank, built at a gurdwara commemorating a boy who died at nine years old, one storey for each year. The stairs are steep and the view from the top takes in the whole complex, the tank, the town and the plain behind.
Then the fort on the western side of the old city, built in 1760 and later held by Ranjit Singh, who ran the Sikh Empire from the Punjab for the first four decades of the nineteenth century and paid for the gold on the temple. It has been turned into a heritage site with museums and daily performances, which is more polished than the rest of Amritsar and a useful hour on the history if you want it.
The airport is twenty minutes away, the station less, and the Delhi trains take about six hours.
- 08:00
Baba Atal Rai Tower
OtherNine storeys, one for each year of the life it commemorates, and the best view of the Golden Temple there is. Shoes off at the bottom, and the stairs are narrow and busy.
- 10:00
Gobindgarh Fort
HistoricA brick and lime fort of 1760, restored and turned into a museum complex with a light show and a Punjabi cultural performance. Ticketed, and worth it mainly for the Ranjit Singh material.
- 13:00
Lassi before leaving
EatPunjabi lassi comes in a steel tumbler the size of a pint glass with a layer of cream on top. One of these replaces lunch.
With more time: If you have another hour, there is a Hindu temple a kilometre away built as a warren of mirrored caves and tunnels that you walk through barefoot, occasionally through ankle-deep water. It is completely unlike anything else in the city and it is free.
Before you go
When to go
October to March. November to February is cold at night and perfect in the day. December and January bring dense fog to the Punjab plain, which delays flights and trains regularly, so leave slack around connections.
April to June is very hot, up to 45 degrees, and the marble round the tank is unwalkable barefoot in the middle of the day. The monsoon in July and August is short and heavy here.
Visiting the Golden Temple
It is open around the clock and free. Cover your head, remove your shoes and socks at the counters outside, wash your feet in the shallow trough at the entrance, and do not take tobacco or alcohol in. Headscarves are handed out free at the gate if you have not brought one. Photography is fine in the outer walkway and not inside the shrine itself.
Go twice: once before dawn, when the holy book is brought into the shrine for the day and there is almost nobody about, and once late at night, when it is floodlit and the reflection is at its best. The middle of the day is when the queue for the causeway is longest.
The langar
The community kitchen serves somewhere between fifty and a hundred thousand free meals a day, more on weekends and festivals, and it has done continuously for centuries. You collect a steel tray, sit on the floor in a long hall, and the food comes to you.
There is no charge and no expectation. If you want to give something back, the washing-up hall takes volunteers with no notice at all, and an hour of it is the most memorable thing many visitors do here.
Getting to the border ceremony
The Attari border post is about half an hour west of the city. Taxis and shared cars go in the afternoon; agree a return as well as a departure. The ceremony starts before sunset and runs about forty-five minutes.
Arrive at least two hours early for a seat, take nothing but a phone and a bottle of water because bags are not allowed in and there is nowhere to leave them, and be prepared for a crowd of several thousand people who treat it as a football match. It does not run when the border is closed, which happens.
Almost every great religious building on earth is designed to make you feel small. This one is designed to feed you. That is a genuinely different idea, and standing in the washing-up line at eleven at night with two hundred other people is the clearest way to understand it.
Three days is enough for the temple, the history and the border, and to go back to the tank four or five times. Most people do.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is three days enough for Amritsar?
- Comfortably. Two nights covers several visits to the temple at different hours, the massacre memorial, the museums and the border ceremony. One night is possible and means choosing between the border and a dawn visit.
- Can non-Sikhs go into the Golden Temple?
- Yes, anyone can, at any hour, free. Cover your head, take your shoes off, wash your feet at the entrance, and do not carry tobacco. There are four doors precisely to make the point that nobody is excluded.
- Can I really eat in the langar?
- Yes, and you should. It is free, it runs day and night, and visitors are as welcome as anyone else. Volunteering in the washing-up hall for an hour takes no arrangement at all.
- Is the Wagah border ceremony worth it?
- Yes, with caveats. Go early, take almost nothing because bags are not permitted, and be ready for a very large, very loud crowd. It occasionally does not run when relations between the two countries are strained, so check on the day.
- Where should I stay?
- Within walking distance of the temple, which is most of the old city. The complex's own pilgrim lodgings include rooms for foreign visitors at almost no cost, and there are ordinary hotels a few streets out.
- What should I eat?
- Amritsari kulcha with chole for breakfast, Amritsari fish fried in gram flour, butter chicken at one of the old restaurants, and lassi in a tumbler you will struggle to finish. Alcohol is not sold anywhere near the temple.
- Can I change this plan?
- Yes. Copy it and rearrange. The only fixed points are the border ceremony, which happens before sunset and needs the whole afternoon, and the temple at dawn, which is worth setting an alarm for.