ADVERTISEMENTRushing through London, it’s easy to take the capital’s great variety for granted.
But even if I wasn’t on a walking tour that’s just paused, Shri Sanatan Mandir Hindu temple on Ealing Road would have stopped me in my tracks.
It glows with self-possession in the November sunlight; 9,700 square metres of Gujarati carved limestone. While we’re gazing up at the temple, our guide Vaishali Patel is watching us with delight.
“I love seeing everyone’s eyes light up when they see the temple,” she tells me afterwards. “And the look of their faces eating paan.” (We’ll get to that).
Vaishali designed her ‘Immersive Indian Community Tour of North London’ following training from Women in Travel, a UK-based social enterprise that connects women from diverse, underserved communities with fulfilling jobs in tourism. Another graduate of their tour guiding academy is sharing the Ethiopian flavours of Shepherds Bush, on tours available through Intrepid Travel.
For other Londoners, these tours offer an authentic way to appreciate the multiculturalism of home. And a sustainable way to get a taste of another country without the cost and air miles.
What does the Indian tour of London involve?
Ealing Road is a well-known commercial street among London’s Indian population, and the obvious choice for an immersive tour.
“This street has it all. It’s very sensory, you can smell incense sticks, the food, see the colours of the clothes, the fake gold,” says Vaishali, who grew up in neighbouring Harrow. Her parents are from the west Indian state of Gujarat, and as a child would take her to Ealing Road to shop for vegetables. “Everything here is catered for the Indian Gujarati lifestyle,” she says.
London is huge, and it takes me around an hour to arrive at Alperton on the Piccadilly Line from my area of North London. It beats the roughly 8 hours it would take to fly to Ahmedabad, while still giving a sense of journeying. And, after meeting Vaishali and our small group, the Hindu temple is the perfect place to start.
“I invite you to take part in a meditative journey,” she says before we step inside, activating an attention to detail that makes the rest of the morning so rewarding.
Walking silently around the paths inside the temple - with its 41 statues of deities also carved in Gujarat - I’m struck by how old and grounded it feels for a building completed in 2010. Perhaps some of that weightiness comes from its significance to the community; Vaishali says she is more spiritual than religious, but the temple makes her feel rooted.
She weaves personal experiences and family anecdotes into her cultural narration. Like her mum’s older aunts, who decades ago decided to don the traditional white saris of widows in order to travel India and its temples with greater independence.
What Indian foods can you eat on Ealing Road?
Our next stop is definitely the one that has lingered most with me taste-wise: a paan shop.
This snack, or mouth sweetener, is made using a colourful assortment of ingredients: desiccated coconut, nutmeg, coriander, candied fruit, fennel seeds (giving it a medicinal flavour) and more, all wrapped in a betel leaf. Some varieties include tobacco, and are chewed and spat out - as faint pink marks on the pavement show, despite the shop sign prohibiting this.
Sweet-toothed travellers will be thrilled by a stop at a traditional sweet shop too. My favourite was barfi - a dense hit of sugar and condensed milk - westernised with a layer of chocolate.
A trip to a sari shop is a different kind of treat for the eyes, and a chance to hear more about the life and times of Ealing Road from a lovely, family-run business, who arrived in London in the 1970s from India via Nairobi.
A couple of stops later, and you’ll have rebuilt your appetite for a restaurant lunch of delicious Gujarati street food and mango lassis.
A walking tour from a walking tour lover
This immersive experience is made by Vaishali - it simply wouldn’t be the same without her. She’s not only part of the community, but a natural storyteller and travel lover, who says she always takes walking tours when abroad to get off the beaten track.
ADVERTISEMENTAmid a 20 year-long career in marketing, a desire to spread her wings has taken her on solo travel adventures all over the world, from Brazil to New Zealand. She loves how expansive it feels, meeting people and gaining self-knowledge; “people reflect back to you parts of you that you didn’t see yourself,” she says.
Vaishali’s passion for solo travel and desire to embolden other women has just led to her publishing a book, ‘Solo Explorers’, born of conversations with 30 other female travellers.
“I had no idea how much other cultures will be interested in something we take for granted,” she says of Ealing Road. “But there’s actually wow moments for other cultures.”
“This is very real. It’s not staged; you’re stepping into the daily lives of shop owners, businesses and people.” The tours take place on Saturday mornings because it gets too busy in the afternoons.
They cost £65 (€76) per person, and can be booked through Women in Travel’s website shop.
ADVERTISEMENTA percentage of the proceeds from each tour goes back into supporting the social enterprise’s mission to provide women - many of whom are refugees or survivors of domestic abuse, human trafficking or homelessness - with the opportunity to fulfil their economic and individual potential through employability and entrepreneurship.
The writer was a guest of Women in Travel.