All Muslims dream is to visit Mecca once in their lifetime. All Sikhs dream to visit the Golden Temple once in their lifetime. For us, one down, one to go.
Our guide met us at the hotel at 8:30pm for the ride to the nightly ‘putting the book to bed’ ceremony!? This, we learned, is a huge ceremony performed every night in every Sikh temple in the world. The Guru Granth Sahib is a 1400 page collection of hymns, prayers and sayings dating from the 15th century. (I just downloaded it on my Kindle for $.99!) The book is so revered that that they put it to bed every night in its own bedroom, let it ‘sleep’ wake it up in the morning, take it back to its holy place in the Golden Temple, and do it all over again every day.
The procession is very precise with the preparation of the Palanquin for its transport. Our guide, who takes Westerners here frequently positioned us precisely in different locations so that we could observe every part of this most sacred ceremony. We among the 1000’s of Sikhs. Quite an experience. I felt like this was an amalgam of the Old Testament ceremonies in the Hebrew’s sanctuary and Lord of the RIngs. A few pictures:
Everyone needs a head covering, we purchased mine on the street for 10 rupees, (20 cents). Our guide is putting it on properly. Also, no shoes, or socks, everyone is barefoot. Period.
All of the Golden Temple is either veneered in gold or solid gold. Average daily attendance is 100,000 people! More than who visit the Taj Mahal!
We stood right in front of the Palanquin as it was being prepared to transport the Guru Granth Sahib from the Temple to its bedroom. One of the prepares actually scolded Gloria that her head covering wasn’t doing the job fully!
Lots of singing an chanting during this preparation ceremony. They guy in the white turban is the lead.
This is where the Guru Granth Sahib will end up. Everything is fresh and clean. They now take the Palanquin all the way back to the Temple and the Book Keeper places it in the Palanquin to be brought back here, then the Book Keeper picks it up to take into the bedroom. BTW, the Palanquin is SOLID gold, takes 6 struggling men to carry it!
Yep, this the the bedroom, they tuck the Guru Granth Sahib in just like a baby.
This guys is blowing his horn in front of the Book Keeper. A crush of people singing and chanting, sensory overload.
This is an amazing shot Gloria got of the Book Keeper, no flash allowed, so hard to get good clean pictures. He has the Guru Granth Sahib on his head. Again, people all around us, body to body, we were the only Westerners.
An amazing complex of buildings. I have never seen so much gold anywhere! BTW, several times our guide was stopped by someone who wished him well. He knew quite a few people in the Temple area. As we were going out, one more guy shook his hand. Gloria mentioned to him that he seemed to know a lot of people, he says he did, AND the last guy that said hi was none other then the Book Keeper himself. Whoa!
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