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India's most sacred towns & temples
36 places
Rajasthan
Mehandipur Balaji is a Hanuman temple in Dausa district, built between two Aravalli hills, and it is not a place to visit for its architecture.
Khatu is a small town in Sikar district, 80 km by road from Jaipur, and what is worshipped in its temple is a head, an idol in stone.
Karni Mata Temple, also called Madh, is the one known well beyond Rajasthan as the Temple of Rats, and the name is meant literally.
Haryana
A bathing tank 17 km north-east of Yamunanagar and Jagadhari, on the Bilaspur road, held sacred by Hindus and Sikhs alike and also known as Gopal Mochan and…
Chandigarh took its name from this temple rather than the other way round, which is the fact worth carrying up the highway with you.
West Bengal
Ekachakra lies 20 km from Rampurhat in Birbhum, and it is a village rather than a site, which changes how you should plan.
The Bargabhima Temple stands at Tamluk in Purba Medinipur, on the bank of the Roopnarayan, and is counted among the 51 Shaktipeeths, the one known as Vibhash.
Uttarakhand
Chandi Devi stands on Neel Parvat, the eastern summit of the Sivalik hills at the southern edge of the Himalaya, above Haridwar.
Surkanda Devi is a hilltop shrine near Dhanaulti in Tehri Garhwal, at roughly 2,756 metres, and the height does the work: the Himalayan ranges lie open in a…
Telangana
Thirty-five kilometres out of Hyderabad, on top of Paramanand Giri hill at Sanghi Nagar, with a Raja Gopuram tall enough to pick out from several kilometres…
Sikkim
A Shiva temple at Legship in Gyalshing district, standing along the banks of the River Rangeet.
Odisha
An old centre of Shaivism in Deulajhari village, in the Athmallik sub-division of Angul district.
A limestone cave shrine to Shiva, about 55 km from Jeypore in Koraput district.
Leh & Ladakh
The white dome above Chanspa is newer than it looks. A Japanese monk, Gyomyo Nakamura, built it in 1991, and the 14th Dalai Lama enshrined relics of the…
Jharkhand
Rajrappa's shrine to Chhinnamasta pulls devotees from every part of Jharkhand, and across the borders from Bihar and West Bengal too, which tells you most of…
Delhi
Built between 1927 and 1931 for the Viceroy, which is why Delhi still calls it the Viceroy Church, and standing just east of Parliament House and Rashtrapati…
Bihar
Budhi Mai is a village in Vaishali district, on the Lalganj road at Haruli, and the reason to stop is the temple rather than the village around it.
Bakraur is a village a little east of Bodh Gaya, directly across the Phalgu River from the town where the Buddha is said to have reached enlightenment.
Kastaharni Ghat is the bathing ghat on the Ganges at the eastern edge of Munger, and it carries the double life most working ghats do.
Mandar Parvat rises about 700 ft over Bounsi in Banka district, roughly 45 km south of Bhagalpur on the state highway that carries on to Dumka.
Champapuri is a neighbourhood of Bhagalpur standing on the site of ancient Champa, capital of the Anga Mahajanapada and the main centre of the Anga cultural…
Andhra Pradesh
Look up. The paintings are the reason to come, bright and closely detailed frescoes of Rama and Krishna drawn from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the…
Assam
There is no idol in the sanctum. What devotees come for is a small pit filled with water, which is taken to be the goddess herself, and it catches most…
One rock in the middle of the Kosi, with the shrine sitting sixty feet above the riverbed on top of it: that is Garjiya Devi, 14 km north of Ramnagar on the…
The image here is a stone, held to be the goddess Rankini herself rather than a carving of her.
Sikkimese Buddhists call this the heart of Denzong and hold it to be the holiest monastery in the state, a Nyingma gompa on a hilltop between the Rathong chu…
Punjab
It is easy to read this as one more building inside the Golden Temple complex.
Bricks made from soil carried out of Mecca sit in the central arch. Muhammad Qutb Shah commissioned them, and they gave the mosque its name.
Manipur
Imphal's largest Vaishnava temple went up in 1846 under Maharaja Nara Singh and was rebuilt thirty years later by Maharaja Chandrakriti, so what stands is the…
Tripura
A temple to the divine couple Lakshmi Narayana, standing in the Ujjayanta Palace grounds in Agartala and founded by Birendra Kishore Manikya during his reign…
Puducherry
Villianur's temple answers to three names — Thirukameeswarar, Kokilamba-Kameeswarar, or simply the Villianur temple — and covers two acres behind concentric…
Madhya Pradesh
Nearly 200 small sandstone temples fill a 25-acre slope in the Chambal ravines, about 35 kilometres north of Gwalior and 30 east of Morena, dedicated between…
You will be told this is the oldest functioning Hindu temple in the world, dated to 108 CE by the ASI and the state religious trust board.
What stands here is a second act. French troops and local people destroyed the temple during riots between Hindus and Christians in 1748, and forty years…
Of all the old stone in Bhubaneswar, this is the piece still fully in use: Lingaraja is active in worship where most of the city's temples are not, and that…
Built in the shape of a chariot with eighteen wheels and seven horses, this hilltop temple on the Ranchi-Tata road near Bundu is modern rather than ancient.
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