This year during my November trip, I happened to be in London for Diwali, which is a Hindu festival that takes place in fall also known as “the festival of lights”. So I figured since I was in London, a place with one of the largest indian communities, I had to celebrate it. One of the biggest indian temples outside of India is actually in London called Swaminarayan Temple, and for the festivities there would be fireworks and food. To my advantage, my couchsurfing host was indian so I had someone to go with.
But things didn’t exactly go as planned. This was the very same day that I visited Camden 
Town (you can check out my post about it here), and after losing two of my friends, we had to go back home to check if they had returned and give them the house keys, losing valuable travel time to Neasden, where the temple is located. Fireworks would start at 8.30 pm, so even after taking 2 buses and 1 subway ride , we were there on time.
Except that we weren’t; when we got there fireworks were done, we had gotten the timing wrong and fireworks actually started at 8 pm!. All that there was left to do was to eat. So we ate, and it was delicious :p
Even though I missed the fireworks, couldn’t enter the temple because it was already closed and got completely wet walking in the rain, it was a fun adventure. It made me happy to just be there eating indian food, sharing with friends and feeling like a part of the indian community 🙂
All the pictures below are from people that kindly let me snap pictures of them like a creepy tourist/blogger while they ate.
RESTLESS FOOTPRINTS 