On 17th of October the Hindus celebrate the Festival of Light. It is just as our New Year celebration. This was the reason for us going to Europe's biggest Hindu temple.
We came to the temple around 3 pm along with some other Indian friends of Jatin. It was a lot of security around the temple. High walls made it hard to take a good picture of it and it wasn't allowed with cameras inside. We had to leave our bags and cameras outside, in some kind of big wardrobe. Also we had to go through metal detectors when entering the temple. Before we could go further inside we also had to leave our shoes. Not allowed with shoes in the holiest part of the temple.
The temple was an amazing view both from the outside and the inside. The whole thing is made of marble. Italian marble brought to India to get carved, and then brought to London and put together. Inside we walked around to the statues of all the different gods. Jatin told me about the different gods, but it was too hard to remember. Later on we also went to a big prayer session, held by on of the religion's great saints. It was in a really big room, more like a hall, where everyone were sitting on the floor (the oldest people had chairs). The session lasted fore about half an hour. Some of the saints went also around tossing rice and holly water at us (symbols of blessings). Even though I couldn't understand a thing of what had been spoken, and though my stiff feet were killing me, I felt kind of in peace sitting there. It was nice.
From 9 pm to 9.30 pm the celebration finished of with a great laser and firework show. 4000 bombs made an amazing experience which just went on and on.
I am really glade I got to experience this. Thank you Jatin!
Pictures: The Temple, The Fireworks and Some of the people I met.
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