BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Bartlett, Chicago, IL, 60103

I visited BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (temple) many times, this is a beautiful temple near to Chicago land and only 35 miles from Downtown. To let you know this is a Desi temple and majority of the visitors are Hindu. All the major Hindu functions are celebrated here so this is a nice place to visit on special Indian occasions.

If you like to know about Indian culture, heritage, people, practice then please visit this mandir on a special function day so that you can enjoy the day and gain some knowledge.

What I like about BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (temple)

• Free food on special occasions, how can you hate this?
• The design of this mandir is stunning, the interiors are in wood and marvel carving which I loved the most.
• I love temple that practices silence and this is the one so I like it.
• Love to see lots of Desi crowd at one place and chat with them.

What I didn’t like about the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir

• The management people should speak in Hindi (national language of India) or English (international language), not in Gujurati (local language of Gujurat, India) at least.
• Still to find one more issue to add here. I found more complains now. (update: 10/16/2008)
• Girls don’t visit this temple wearing a sleeveless salwar, once the authority of this temple asked my friend to stay out because she was not in proper dress code that can be a jean and top but not a sleeveless salwar. This does surprises me.
• Married women can’t hold their husband’s hand and walk in the temple building, wow, what’s wrong in this? The guards shout when they see such things, I am shocked.

If you guys visited any great temple in North America then share with us what you liked and disliked about the place/management.