The Dome of the Rock is indisputably one of the most charged holy places in the world. Visitors are not allowed to bring any kind of religious texts /symbols/objects to avoid break outs of the smallest skirmishes. Recently, a Rabbi was not allowed to enter the Temple Mount because he had an apple with him. The logic was that, when he would eat the apple on the Temple Mount, he would have to utter a Jewish prayer, and that could not be allowed. We can all debate the soundness of the logic, but we cannot ignore the severity of the situation here.

 
The queue looks long and moves slow. I made it to the ramp leading to the mosque compound after standing in line for just 30 minutes. Tourists are allowed to enter only from the Dung Gate at specific times (7.30-11 am and 1.30-2.30 pm) depending on the season.

 
The Temple Mount complex is vast and comprises the mosque itself, a huge facade and porch, an ablution fountain, and a lot of space where visitors and pilgrims alike can rest. Until my most recent visit, I had only caught a glimpse of the golden dome from vantage points across the Old City. All of Islam at one point prayed in the direction of the Temple Mount before orienting towards Mecca.

 
The mosque and its compound completely isolates visitors from the din of the Old City. Visitors are not allowed to enter the mosque itself, but only allowed access to the compound of the mosque. As the view of the golden dome got bigger and bigger I could only try to imagine what this magnificent mosque must look like from the inside. Other tourists who wondered the same tried to push their luck. I noticed a rather apologetic security guard explain to a couple of tourists who sought to enter the mosque the reason behind shutting the mosque to non-Muslim visitors. I overheard him say, “Mosques are generally open to the public. There was a attack, since then, non-Muslims are not allowed.”

Had I not had other plans for the day ahead of me, I could have spent a couple of hours walking around the compound of the mosque.

 
While the imposing structure with its golden dome held me in awe when I entered the Temple Mount, it is the stark difference between two places of worship that gripped me. At the compound of the Dome of the Rock I could hear birds chirping, women sat in the shade of the porch either chit-chatting about mundane topics or praying, I could not tell. Children frolicked about, chasing pigeons and generally doing what children do when no one is paying attention. Men sat together reciting verses from the Koran. I saw one man in particular lazing under the shade of a tree on a bamboo mat that he seemed to have laid out for this very purpose. Here, I stand in front of one of the most beautiful mosques ever built. And I am reminded that a level below, a few metres away, men and women are facing this very spot and mourning at the Western Wall with only the image of their Temple from about 2,000 years ago.

The Western Wall Tunnel Tour is as much a must-do as a visit to the Western Wall itself (need to reserve slots in advance). The original western retaining wall of the Second Temple was about 488 meters. What we see today as the Western Wall is a mere 57 metre long section of the southern part of the western retaining wall. The city of Jerusalem was elevated by rebuilding it over archways sometime before 750 AD. The tunnel tour takes visitors on a walk under these archways for the entire length of the western retaining wall, exiting onto the via Dolorosa.

 
If archaeological remains impress you, the Tunnel Tour is for you. For a fee of 30 NIS, the 90 minute guided tour takes visitors through the tunnel which is still an active excavation site. Smooth limestone from the Second Temple period at times more than 10 metres in length and 3 metres high run along the tunnel as you walk down a road 2,000 years old. It is as much an archaeological tour as it is a tour about the history of the Jewish people. The excavations that began after Israel won the 1967 war with Jordan have exposed walls, quarries, roads that date back a couple of thousand years. But the excavations were not without dispute.

The excavators went very close to digging all away to the spot that is believed to be the Holy of the Holies or the inner sanctum of the Temple of Solomon. Dispute arose and excavators had to stop digging in the direction of the Holy of the Holies. The excavation site towards the inner sanctum is considered to be the closest to the Holy of the Holies and devout pilgrims can seek to go down to the tunnels to offer their prayers.

 
Side note: We were booked to visit the Tunnels on a Sunday. But we were delayed in reaching Jerusalem and could not make it on time. The really accommodating Tunnel admin allowed us to do the tour the next day.

The tour of the Temple Institute could be taken up for pure masochistic reasons. You always know a religious fanatic when you see one, sometimes you can even tell that the guy does not really believe the sh*t he is spewing at you. Even if the guy truly believes in what he is saying, you could brush it aside. But the Temple Institute stirs a different emotion.

 
What is the Temple Institute, you wonder. Well, it is nonprofit that is preparing for that day when the Third Temple will be built. Every article in the Temple has to be kosher and all that jazz. This Institute has made/built many of these articles and seems to be awaiting the day to install these objects.

 
The tour began with a 20-something girl talking about the foundation stone, Adam and other such Biblical mumbo-jumbo that I chose to ignore. Then she took it up a notch. “We can’t build the Temple right now, because it is presently a little occupied,” she said pointing to the Dome of the Rock. In fact, the Temple Institute has a FAQ page that addresses this concern of little occupation. It says, “With the acquiescence of the Moslem world the Moslem structures currently on the Mount would be disassembled and reassembled elsewhere.”

 
Everywhere I looked I saw large paintings of tram lines around the Temple Mount, huge cranes lifting concrete blocks over a structure that resembles a temple in place of the al-Aqsa mosque. All this while she spoke of how the Institute was preparing the vessels, garments for priests, menorahs for the “soon to be built” Third Temple. Pretty soon I started wondering if at the back of the building there was a group of crazies just praying for the mosque to fall or something.

 
We visited two rooms. One with the sacrificial altar, garments of the priests and high priest, and the water dispenser for holy ablutions. It turns out that the staff of the Temple Institute are only trying to interpret what the scriptures say about the Holy tools and apparel and do not know for sure what the Holy scripture says really. In the case of the breast plate of the High Priest which is supposed to have some 12 gemstones arranged a specific way, the website of the Institute says, “The names of these stones is particularly enigmatic: there are over 30 varying opinions as to the final identification of the 12 stones. Faced with this sort of situation, it becomes necessary to engage in what can be called ‘linguistic sleuthing’ in an effort to arrive at a working conclusion.”

 
Many aspiring priests have actually bought the priest garments from the Temple Institute. The tour group which I was a part of included a young boy who was training to be a priest. When the tour guide mentioned that the garment of the High Priest was yet to be bought, the boy with great excitement looked at his parents and said, “Gift for my Bar Mitzvah.”

 
I had so many questions during that tour and even before I could ask them the tour guide gave the explanation, “Because of G-d’s presence.” Now, I suffered this out of body experience, it is up to you to subject yourself to this too.
The Temple Institute had resorted to crowd-funding to rebuild the Temple in 2014. It raised a total of 104,814 USD in two months! Watch these videos just for kicks.

 
As it turns out, the Temple Institute is quite inspirational(!). Of course, there are those who visit it and then go back chanting, “The Third Temple is coming”, but there are others. Creative minds have made a TV show with the premise that there is an international conspiracy to build the Third Temple. Thankfully, the Temple Institute did not come across as something as extreme, if that is any respite.