AROUND 6,000 revellers turned out for the annual celebration of the Sikh Vaisakhi festival in Gravesend on Saturday (April 13).

A procession of 30 floats took three hours to wind its way through the town from the Gurdwara Guru Nanak Marg and back to what is the largest Sikh temple in Europe.

The Gravesend-based Jugnu and 4x4 bhangra groups were strutting their stuff on their own floats, as were Guru Nanak FC which is based at the town gurdwara.

The festival celebrates the beginning of the Sikh new year when Sikhs in India would traditionally start selling the year’s wheat crop around April 13 to 14.

The procession also remembers the founding of the modern Sikh order with the 10th and final guru, Guru Gobind Singh who decreed the names Singh and Kaur should be used for male and female followers of the faith.

Gurdwara Guru Nanak Marg assistant secretary and event organiser Brian Sanger said: "It went really, really well.

"I think people really enjoyed the display by some of our bhangra dancers in the town centre.

"It brought the whole community together rather than just the Sikh community.

"Every year we are adding another community dimension in in what is beginning to be a Gravesend event rather than just a Gravesend Sikh event."