Samleswari Temple

Sambalpur's presiding goddess sits on the bank of the Mahanadi, and the reach of her following is the point: after Jagannath, Samaleswari is the only deity in Odisha worshipped across a region this wide, all of western Odisha and into parts of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Locals call her Samalei Maa. The temple is of the Sandhara order, a square sanctum ringed by a pillared gallery you walk for pradakshina, and it is two separate structures rather than one. The whole building was plastered; the surface has gone mouldy with age. Come for the worship, not the stonework.