Hare Krishna Temple in Gaborone

Tomorrow is another day

- 05 May 2013 -



"Tomorrow is another day" is what I said in my previous post after our trip to Gaborone Dam and Kgale Hill. So I woke up early and headed out. Early for me is before the sun rises... So it was 4:30am and I was driving through Gaborone heading toward Kanye. I wasn't planning to go all the way to Kanye but according to the maps I had, there were some nice mountains on this route.

It was one of those morning where I just couldn't get the right scenery and after driving around aimlessly for a while I decided to head back to the hotel, but not after I got a photo of some donkeys and some other pictures.

On returning from my morning drive I entered town and noticed a marathon on the go. I was stopped at a traffic light and there I sat for a good 30 minutes. This wasn't good for my already frustrated mood, eventually I decided to turn left and try and find another route around the runners. I was making good progress until I took a right turn and notice another traffic block with runners crossing. I sat there for another 45 minutes... Other drivers were just as frustrated as me... some were driving their vehicles over sidewalks to get to the other side of the road, some were reversing down the one way road, and some just turned their vehicles around on the one way and sped into on coming traffic.

I'm all for city events, it brings the action right up and close to the people in the city, but it needs to be organised very very well... this wasn't! A person would suspect that detours around the marathon would be established and traffic routed to avoid interruption to commuters. I spoke to a marathon marshall and he hinted that we should just wait as the marathon is only about 3 hours long..... very very badly done Gaborone!!

So I relaxed in my hotel room for most of the day feeling quite frustrated that I was unable to get the photos I wanted. I looked out my hotel window and noticed the peak of a building in the neighbourhood next to the hotel, I search google maps and found that it was labelled as a Hindu temple... so I decided I will go take a look later in the late afternoon.

I arrived at the temple and asked the guard if I could take some photos of the building, after been redirected to another man on the premises I was given the green light and started snapping away.

After taking a couple of photos another member of the institution approached me and welcomed me. He took me around the building and gave me a book that contains a whole lot of information about the temple... from the erecting of the building to the religion on Hare Krishna. He was also so nice as to invite me to the roof of the building and show me around. He mentioned that everything is crafted by hand.

The sun was setting and soon I wouldn't be able to hold the camera still  enough to get decent pictures, but the friendly member of this temple (his name I can't remember at this moment) told me that I should stick around as the lights on the temple at night will make for awesome photography... I considered this and told him I will be back with my tripod in 30 minutes. I took a brisk walk back to my hotel room and headed back to the temple.

At first the lights were overpowered but the remaining sunlight but soon colour started to appear. Turns out the temple is not just lit by ordinary lights but by multi-coloured lights that shine on the building from all sides.

The colours were spectacular and the photos were coming out well, and I was soon joined by a couple of "members" who were really interested in what I was doing. One of them which has been involved in photography and videography asked if he can try something with my camera and tested out the zoom effect on night photography. I have played with this before, but I must say the colours in this setting gave an awesome effect.

The below photo is credited to him, I did play with it a bit longer but I can't remember who took which photo, so I will credit him with all of it...

I was then invited inside to get some photos of the program currently on the go.

I left soon after, but was feeling a lot better about the day from a photography perspective and was very glad to have experience it... thanks to the very friendly guys at the temple.