Golden Temple

Once we'd visited the elephant camp our drivers suggested that we went to the Buddhist Golden Temple at Bylakuppe. I'd heard that it was a big place, one of the biggest outside Tibet. It wasn't far from the elephant camp, and we went through a few touristy towns. It was really nice to be outside of the dust and noise of Bangalore, and drive along with the car's windows wide open through the fields and villages.

The junction to the temple had a few signs saying that foreigners weren't allowed entry, although nobody seemed to be checking. I'm not sure what it was about, maybe concern about Chinese or other anti-Tibetan influence, but there didn't seem to be any problems. Once we got through the gate of the temple it was lovely and quiet - we walked past lots of apartments (I'd guess they're for the monks and other visitors) to get to the main temple:

Monks outside their apartments

The main temple

We couldn't get into the main temple, but there is a more modern temple area at the side, which we spent a lot of time in. Even the kids took a few minutes to sit and contemplate:

The doorway to the temple. Always important to have a moustachioed lion on guard

Three golden buddhas

It's clearly a working place, and we saw a lot of monks, young and old:

On the way to class

Running to prayers

The overall feel was really mellow, and Emma and I both wished we had spent more time there. However the kids were getting fairly tired and a bit hungry by this point, so it was time to go. We did get a ton of photos (here's the whole album). It was almost 3pm by the time we got back to the resort, but we did have a treat on the drive back - look who we bumped into: