Amritsar Golden Temple Walking Tour

Witness the blissful book opening or closing ceremony, aka the Palki Sahib Ceremony and get backstage access to the world’s largest community kitchen with our slow-paced guided walking tour inside the Golden Temple. Our expert and knowledgeable tour leader will navigate you through the crowd and ensure you're in the right place at the right time to experience the scheduled ceremonies, events and activities inside the holy shrine. Perform volunteer work and understand in detail the intriguing reasons behind customs like submitting shoes, cleaning hands and feet and covering the head before entering a gurdwara while learning about the various Sikh customs like wearing a turban and carrying a sword. Get know about the fascinating story of the healing powers of the undefiled Sarovar and the history behind Miri-Piri, the mighty swords. Although extremely popular amongst solo travelers, couples, and groups, the tour is also highly favored by the Sikh expat families who are looking forward to bringing their children closer to the rich values of the Sikh religion.

What to expect

We will start our tour from the common assembly point at the entrance of the Saragarhi Sarai and then will walk all around heritage street to the Golden Temple. We reach the clock tower side of the Golden Temple and deposit our shoes. After entering from the northern side of the Golden Temple, we see the first glance of the temple while getting down from the stairs. Then we move towards the right (in an anti-clockwise direction) and pay our visit to the Ber Baba Budha Ji, an ancient banyan tree that was named after the first head priest of the Golden Temple

We will now walk to the entrance gate leading us to the bridge connecting the main temple monument. We walk down the bridge towards the sanctum, absorb the calmness and appreciate the inner beauty of the holy shrine. We will not talk much while being there since it might disturb other pilgrims who are offering their prayers. We will observe the gold plated walls and the beautiful limestone paintings enhancing the architectural value of the Golden Temple. After visiting the Golden Temple, we walk down again on the bridge towards the main square and take Holy Pudding as a token of blessing.

From there we move towards Akal Takht, the Throne of God, opposite to the bridge leading to the Golden Temple. This is the place where the holy book rests during the night. We will sit at a convenient place to look at the holy ceremony of the religious book.

It is here when our tour leader will explain the history of the Golden Temple and Sikh religion until the devotees bring a golden carriage and decorate it with flowers and scent to place the holy book, which marks the beginning of the Morning or Evening Ceremony. We will observe the various traditions and proceedings with this ceremony such as head priest of the holy shrine bringing the holy book out from Akal Takht or the main Temple, placing it over his head and then placing it inside the golden carriage. During this whole procession, there are the sounds of the drumbeat, trumpet, rose petal showers and people chanting holy hymns all around.

After the ceremony ends, we will walk towards the memorial that belongs to one of the greatest warrior and martyr who sacrificed his life in a war for the freedom of the Golden Temple from the invaders during the Mughal Rule. On the way, we will also visit the Dukh Bhanjani Ber (sorrow healer tree) and understand the history and significance of the holy pond.

It will then be time to go into the community kitchen, which is said to be the largest community kitchen in the world where food is served to nearly 100,000 pilgrims from all around the world for free. While moving through the kitchen, we will witness the chefs and volunteers preparing the dishes like lentils, puddings, roti, vegetables, and tea. We will also visit the second floor of the kitchen and witness the roti making machine, which can make as much as 6000 rotis in one hour.

With the intense feeling of spirituality, selflessness and deep respect for the volunteers, we will take rest as we sit inside the kitchen sipping into our cup of tea and try to find answers to our questions with the help of our tour leader as we recall all that we experienced in the last few minutes into our tour. After our discussions and reasoning, we will bid farewell to our group members and tour leaders and take back this overwhelming memory with us.