500 Steps Down/Surrey, British Columbia
The setting
The Surrey, British Columbia of 500 Steps Down
500 Steps Down takes place over one wedding week in Surrey, British Columbia, and one night in Vancouver. Both cities are real and I have lived in both. Every location in the book is a real place.
Surrey is the city south of the Fraser River, one bridge from Vancouver. Newton, where the Bains family lives in the novel, is one of its town centres: three-storey houses on streets of three-storey houses, a gurudwara, and banquet halls that seat several hundred people. It is not Surrey, England, which is the other place with this name and takes most of the search results.
By Tej Arora. Updated 16 September 2026.
Which parts of Surrey are in the novel?
Two, and the first half of the week happens between them. A house in Newton, and a banquet hall big enough for several hundred guests. The wedding itself is at a gurudwara, and the photographs are taken in a park the photographer picked.
- Newton, Surrey
- The Bains family home. A three-storey house on a street of them.
- A Surrey banquet hall
- The reception. Several hundred guests, a DJ with a lighting package, and a bar.
The Vancouver locations
Four, all of them across the bridge from the wedding: Point Grey, a condo, Davie Street, and the wooden staircase down the cliff to Wreck Beach at UBC, which runs to roughly five hundred steps and gives the book its title.
- Point Grey, Vancouver
- Where the drive ends.
- Wreck Beach, UBC
- The staircase on the cover. Trail 6 runs down the cliff to the beach in roughly five hundred wooden steps.
- A Vancouver condo
- Where Simmy lives, and where visiting relatives take over for the week.
- Davie Street
- Aman’s Vancouver.
What the rooms look like
The Cultural Guide takes each one at length. This is the short version.
The banquet hall
Where the reception is, and where half of Surrey is spending Saturday night.
Surrey has a stretch of halls built for one thing, and on a summer Saturday all of them are doing it. Five hundred to a thousand seats. Round tables of ten, a stage with the couple’s names in lights, a dance floor in the middle, food along one wall and a bar along the other. Valet out front, a photo wall in the lobby, and somebody sitting with the envelopes.
The gurudwara
The Sikh temple. Where the week begins, where the wedding happens, and where anyone can eat.
You can usually spot a gurudwara from the Nishan Sahib, the tall flagpole flying the Sikh flag. Surrey has some of the biggest in the world. Two rooms matter to a visitor: the divan hall, where the Guru Granth Sahib is installed and the service takes place, and the langar hall, where a free vegetarian meal is served to everyone.
The photographs
The park between the gurudwara and the reception.
Between the gurudwara and the reception the wedding party goes to a park for the formal photographs. Stanley Park, Queen’s Park, Crescent Beach, wherever the photographer wanted. The couple will remember it as beautiful in a year and as shoes, heat and hunger on the day.
The full version is in the places and events section of the Cultural Guide.
Authors from Surrey, British Columbia
Tej Arora, Canadian novelist and founder of RazzyTech, based in Surrey, British Columbia. He grew up in Surrey and Vancouver, still lives a few minutes from the house he grew up in, and set his first novel in both.
500 Steps Down is a mystery set during a Punjabi-Canadian wedding week in Surrey, British Columbia. A wedding mystery and slow-burn domestic suspense, told by the last person who saw the bride.
Forthcoming. Publication date to be announced.
More: about Tej Arora, books like 500 Steps Down, and where to buy it.