Gurdwara Dukh Niwaran Sahib, Patiala

Gurdwara Dukh Niwaran Sahib stands at Lehal, now part of Patiala city, and is among the most visited gurdwaras in Punjab. Its story begins with Bhag Ram, a villager of Lehal, who asked Guru Tegh Bahadur to free the area from a disease that was killing people. The Guru came in January 1672, stayed by the village pond and meditated under a banyan tree, and the sickness ended. The place was then called Dukh Niwaran, the remover of suffering, and many devotees still bathe in the sarovar in the belief that it heals.

Raja Amar Singh of Patiala, who ruled from 1748 to 1782, planted a garden here in the Guru's memory and gave it to Nihang Sikhs to look after. In 1920 a planned railway line would have felled the banyan, but the workers would not cut it and Maharaja Bhupinder Singh dropped the plan. Fundraising started in 1930, and the gurdwara was completed in 1942 under Maharaja Yadavindra Singh. The seven-acre complex has a two-storey gateway, a domed main building lined with white marble and floral stucco, a langar hall and a square sarovar. Basant Panchami is its biggest festival, when the whole complex is illuminated.