Amritsar (Golden Temple)

The Golden Temple sits lower than the ground around it, and you walk down steps to reach the water. That is deliberate: nearly every other temple in India makes you climb up to it. It has four doors, one on each side, for the same reason — the building is meant to be entered from any direction, by anyone. Head covered, shoes off, feet through the water channel at the entrance, and nobody will ask you anything else. The langar behind the complex feeds on the order of a hundred thousand people a day, more at weekends, on donated food and volunteer labour. The dish hall takes anyone who turns up to help, and half an hour in it tells you more about the place than any guidebook. The Akal Takht faces the sanctum across the water. It is the seat of temporal authority in Sikhism, and those two buildings looking at each other across a pool is the whole argument of the faith in one view.