Fairy lights wreathe the domed, white Hindu temple in Ottawa South, while inside worshippers celebrate the festival Diwali.
But Centretown worshippers have to travel nearly an hour on public transit to reach the temple at the south end of Bank Street.
The journey is too long to make on a regular basis, says Bhairavi Savani, a student from Kenya.
“At home, we go to the temple once a week. And now that I am here I feel like I should be going, but I don’t because it’s so far away,” says Savani.
She says going to the temple allows her to connect to her culture and her religion.
Dhara Vyas and Nandini Thaker are Hindus who use public transit as their main form of transportation. They say they rarely consider going to the temple, particularly in the winter, because of the journey.
Thaker says a temple that caters to the different kinds of Hindu sects could be developed downtown – convenient for users of public transit, students and those working in the area.
But Shiv Jindal, president of the temple’s board of trustees, says the temple is busy during weekdays and weekends despite the distance.
Kirit Shah, a member of the temple’s board of trustees, admits the temple is not the easiest place to find.
“Yes, it is difficult but the people who are devoted find a way,” he says.
Shah says the temple used to organize transportation from areas such as Orleans and Barrhaven but the system was abused and eventually discontinued.
Jindal says they are working to make the temple easy to access by offering a a spacious parking lot and avoiding downtown traffic.
And there are other smaller options to the main temple such the Vishva Shakti Durga Temple, located in a converted church in the Glebe area since 2005.
The temples in Ottawa try to meet the different requirements of the city's relatively small Hindu population, says Anil Mody, who attends the main temple. The different gods and sects within Hinduism also make it difficult to have a temple for each branch.
Even the story behind Diwali differs in India, but the symbolic meaning is the triumph of good over evil. The day after Diwali is traditionally the Hindu New Year.