In the border city of Amritsar, India and Pakistan meet in a place neither Hindu nor Muslim. Here, like a no-man's land between sworn enemies, sits the holiest of Sikh sites, the Golden Temple.
Dominating the city much as the Taj Mahal overshadows Agra, the Golden Temple has turned Amritsar into an island of Sikhism. The city takes its name from the temple's holy Amrit Sarovar pool, and though Sikhs make up only 2 per cent of the Indian population, they represent about two-thirds of Amritsar's million residents. Turban-sporting pilgrims flow in and out of the city like a tide.
I arrive amid the flow on a sweltering summer morning. At the Golden Temple's eastern entrance I slip on a baseball cap - temple laws decree all visitors must cover their heads - remove my shoes and wash my feet, a temple regulation that is also a blessed relief on this 40-degree-Celsius day. Inside, I join the faithful as they make their clockwise circumambulations of the Amrit Sarovar pool. Song fills the temple grounds, so constant I assume it to be recorded.
On an island in the pool, glowing as bright as the sun above, sits the Golden Temple. Surrounding the pool is a white colonnade; clock towers rise from its northern and southern walls and two minarets from its eastern wall in a blurring of architecture that seems appropriate to this city pinched between religions and lands.
I join the throng of pilgrims queueing to enter the temple, its marble wrapped in sheets of gold. For 30 minutes we edge towards it; it's the most orderly line I've ever encountered in India. Nearby, pilgrims bathe in the Amrit Sarovar, goldfish swimming among them. Playful voices call me to join them in the pool and in the heat I'd like nothing more, though it might invite too many stares.
In the gem-studded interior of the temple, as golden inside as out, three Sikh musicians sit on the floor, two with keyboards, one on drums, playing the endless, unrecorded song.