Gurudwara Bangla Sahib

The site was a nobleman's bungalow — bangla — where Guru Har Krishan stayed in 1664 during an epidemic of smallpox and cholera, drawing water from the well for the sick until he contracted the disease himself and died at the age of eight. The gurudwara that grew here in the following century keeps the well at its centre, now a large marble tank called the sarovar, and pilgrims still leave with bottles of its water.

What a first-time visitor tends to remember is not the gold dome but the kitchen. The langar here serves tens of thousands of free meals a day, cooked and washed up largely by volunteers, and anyone — any faith, any income, no questions — sits on the floor in the same line. Inside the hall, kirtan is sung continuously against the sound of the fans. It is, on an ordinary weekday, one of the most quietly astonishing operations in the city.