It might be the best Indian food you’ll ever have.

The langar is a staple of Sikh worship - and is absolutely free, to everyone. No creed, color, nationality, or even religion is turned away. You sit on the floor, in rows that may stretch as long as a football field, as volunteers dish out ample amounts of lentils, rice, and later even deserts. The langar is supposed to remind you that everyone is equal before God.

At one temple in Delhi, they serve 10,000 people in a single day. By necessity, the place is a factory of human hands: the pots are as large as oil drums and are stirred with shovels, and the dishwashing sinks look like deluxe bathtubs. And despite the scale, hygiene and cleanliness are actually strictly maintained.

Serving everybody equally was, and is, a revolutionary concept in caste-ridden India. But langars have long since expanded beyond India’s borders: most Sikh students in London don’t know how they’d live without them.