Delhi: Gurudwara Bangla Sahib - Faith, Culture and Peace

The kitchen is the reason to come.

Gurudwara Bangla Sahib is Delhi's best-known Sikh temple: a golden dome, a marble courtyard, and the Sarovar, a sacred pool that people walk around and bathe in. It is beautiful, and that is not the remarkable part.

The remarkable part is the langar. The kitchen here cooks and serves free food to anyone who arrives — tens of thousands of meals every day, more on weekends and festivals, to anyone regardless of faith, caste, income or nationality. It is run almost entirely by volunteers, many of whom are ordinary visitors who stopped to help. You sit on the floor in rows and eat the same food as everyone else.

You can go into the kitchen and see it working: the vats of dal that take two people to stir, the roti machine turning out thousands an hour, and beside it a row of people rolling them by hand because that is how it has always been done. Visitors are welcome to join in, and many do.

Your guide explains the principles behind it — seva, service without expectation of return, and the deliberate equality of everyone sitting on the same floor.

Options

Two at checkout: the walking tour with a guide, or with private transfers included.

Included

A knowledgeable guide, and hotel pick-up and drop-off in a private vehicle on the option that lists it.

Worth knowing

Who it suits

Travellers interested in living faith rather than monuments, anyone who has had enough of forts, and visitors who want an hour that is about people rather than architecture.