Lotus Temple

Seven years ago, in 2012, I was in third semester of university and was taking Speaking 3 class. We were given a different task every week and one day we were asked to present about a famous place in the world. I chose to talk about Lotus Temple. Maybe it’s not a really famous place, but its beautiful architecture made me fall in love with it the first time I saw its pictures. One of my cousins had gone there and I was really jealous of him.

I started doing my task by digging more information about the temple on Google. Here’s the summary of what I found:

Lotus Temple, like the name suggests, is a temple shaped like a lotus. It's located in Delhi, India (my second favorite country!) It's one of Baha'i houses of worships which is open for everyone regardless of their religion. The temple building is composed of 27 free-standing marble-clad "lotus petals" arranged in clusters of three to form nine sides. Each of these nine sides has a door opening into a central hall with a height of slightly over 34 meters and a capacity of 2,500 people. Since the completion of its construction, Lotus temple has won numerous architectural awards and has been featured in many newspaper and magazine articles. 

I got a very good result of my presentation, making only one stupid pronunciation mistake :D

Years passed by, and one day in July, 2018 I finally got a chance to visit the temple! I was appointed to go on a business trip to India with 3 other colleagues. The three of them wanted to go to Taj Mahal in Agra and Hawa Mahal in Jaipur. I wanted to go there too, but I had something else to do in Delhi and could just hope I would get another chance to visit those two places, especially Taj Mahal, because it’d been one of my dreams to visit it.

So then my friends went on a 2D1N trip to Agra and Jaipur, meanwhile I stayed in Delhi. It was summer and the temperature was so hot like 35^o or more, but weirdly it also drizzled a bit. The morning my friends left, I went to the hotel restaurant and ate by myself. Next, I went to airport to pick up a friend. This friend had stayed in Delhi for a few years so he was quite familiar with the city. He asked where I wanted to go, and of course I said Lotus Temple!

We went there by auto, or in Indonesia we call Bajaj (Bajaj is actually the name of the manufacturing company). Jakarta has a bad traffic, but it seemed somewhat okay to me after I experienced the traffic of Delhi. Everyone was honking like crazy, ugh.

Twenty minutes later, we reached the temple. But you know what, the line to get in the temple was so long! There were like hundreds of people lining up. My friend and I waited in line as well. Suddenly there was an old man with his whole family wanting to cut the line. This was nothing new to me as this same shit also happens in my own country. But my friend couldn’t stay silent, he kinda scolded the old man, and I felt proud of him for doing that. Anyway, you don't need to pay any entrance ticket to visit Lotus Temple, no wonder so many people go to this place.

After waiting for like forever, we finally entered the temple compound. It was so peaceful in there, unlike the busy streets outside. I saw some crows and other types of birds. It was maybe normal to people living in India, but to me it was fascinating! There were almost no birds in Jakarta!

And then I got to see the temple directly using my own eyes! It was indeed beautiful. I took so many pictures with the temple in the background. My friend said we could go inside, but I refused because there were some other places I wanted to visit. And now I kinda regret not going inside :(