About 30 km southeast of Bathinda, in the village of Talwandi Sabo, stands Takht Sri Damdama Sahib — one of the five takhts, the supreme seats of Sikh temporal authority. A vast white marble complex with a gilded dome and an enormous sarovar, it draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims at Baisakhi in mid-April.
For a traveller, the attraction is both spiritual and architectural: the immense scale of the central shrine, the rhythm of kirtan drifting across the courtyards, the canopied palanquin in which the Guru Granth Sahib is carried in procession at dawn and dusk. Buses and shared taxis run regularly from Bathinda; an easy half-day trip.