The Sikhs welcome all faiths to The Golden Temple. Anyone can eat and sleep there, as long as they show appropriate respect to their religion, which is easy to do (no drugs or alcohol, no shoes, and no uncovered heads inside the temple).
Droves of Hindu sadhus and pilgrims were at the temple when I visited. It’s a major stop on the way back from the Amarnath Yatra, a pilgrimage to the Amarnath Cave in the Indian Himalayas. The cave houses an ice lingam associated with Shiva, making it one of the holiest places for Hindus. Tens or hundreds of thousands make this pilgrimage every July/August, which means that these people had been walking for 2-3 months by the time they reached The Golden Temple (and not a “walking shoe” in sight). There seemed to be waves of them everywhere. A sea of orange, yellow, peach and pink. They were mainly camped out near the dorm where I stayed, and were friendly, curious and often asked to be photographed. Nobody spoke English.
This got me thinking about the whole practice of pilgrimage in modern day India, and in the world, which would be an interesting subject for a bigger project. This particular pilgrimage has a recent history of problems because the cave lies in the predominantly Muslim region of Kashmir. And the ice lingam has shrunk, probably due to global warming.
