Staying in the Golden Temple

Recently we stayed in the accommodation offered by the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The accommodation is basic rooms for a cheap price and dorms and open sleeping by donation offered to the pilgrims visiting the temple form all over the world.

No smoking for 5km around the temple

the room was falling apart a bit

The temple also offers a special dorm for foreigners only which is very basic but also run by donation everyone who had stayed there said it was a real experience so we decided to check it out.

The Golden Temple in its sunshine glory!

Everyone must cover their head inside the temple

We arrived into Amritsar in the late afternoon after travelling all day for Dharamsala we made our way towards the temple by rickshaw and then the last wee bit on foot. All around us people were offering help at first we thought it was false offers and the people touts or otherwise out to gain something but it soon became clear that actually everyone just wanted to lend us a hand.

We arrived at the accommodation and were hustled into the dorm surprisingly it has air conditioning and fans so was a nice cool temperature compared to outside. There are five side rooms each with three camp style beds set up side by side and then a main room which has a line of about eight beds.

We were lucky to get beds in one of the side rooms as although they are still rather open they provide a fraction more privacy. As with hotels in India we had to fill in all our details in a huge leather bound book and show our passports. Once this was done we were left to it.

The staff are constantly around quite often sitting in the dorm as it’s much cooler than outside in the courtyard. Only guests are allowed in and all the staff seem to instantly remember who is who. There are large lockers to store even the biggest of bags although it seemed more people were content to just lock away valuables and leave everything else out in the open.

There are no windows inside the dorm so it’s hard to judge the time when you wake up but the staff turn on the lights in the main room between 7-8am which I a way to get everyone up and moving.

Inside the dorm is a single bathroom with a sink and a bucket shower which does have a water heater but in this heat it’s not at all necessary. The toilets are out of the dorm and across a huge courtyard. There are plenty of toilets and showers there but at all times the bathrooms are heaving especially the woman’s bathroom which also seemed to serve as the children’s bathroom and more than once I saw boys with their mothers that were far too old to be in a room with naked ladies about.

The most interesting point of the toilets were that the cubicles had small windows in the doors and almost every time I went a gaggle of woman would be up on their tip toes watching me go through the window. Thankfully most of them were too short to get a good look. I asked Mark if that happened in the men’s, he said no that the men keep a respectful distance.

At night the courtyard is full of people all sleeping on mats laid down by temple staff as the rooms are so popular there isn’t space for everyone.

The temple also has a community kitchen serving food all day and all night to the many pilgrims who visit. We ate in the dining room once the food was simple but tasty and it was an experience in itself to eat in a hall with hundreds of others. The food is all cooked in huge pots stirred by giant sticks.

One of the huge cooking pots

There is a maximum stay of three nights in the temple which is the time we stayed it wasn’t the best sleep I’ve ever got but that was mostly down to other guests talking and turning the light on constantly. It was a great experience though and one I would defiantly recommend to anyone visiting Amritsar, especially as hotel prices there are so expensive.