Welcome back to another episode of Incredible India. In the previous episode, I took you to one of the epicenter of devotion in India, the Radha Rani Temple, Barsana, Uttar Pradesh.
In this episode, I will take you to another temple in the heart of the Alwar district in Rajasthan, the Karni Mata Temple.
Karni Mata Temple
Karni Mata Temple is a famous Hindu temple in Alwar. It is located close to the famous Bala fort and devotees come from all parts of India to offer their prayers and get blessings from the Karni mata.
Karni Mata is considered to be an incarnation of Hinglaj Mata which is a form of Durga.
How to reach
Alwar is a northeastern district of Rajasthan and is located just 150 Km from the capital New Delhi. For its proximity to New Delhi, the city of Alwar comes under the National Capital region.
It is one of the prominent tourist places in India and is well-connected with the rest of India.
You can come by road from the neighbouring cities like New Delhi, Gurugram, Jaipur etc. We travelled from Gurugram and it took us just under 3 hours to reach Alwar.
It takes around the same amount of time if you are travelling from Jaipur by road.
You can also take one of the trains and drop at Alwar's Railway station. This is recommended if you don't have a private cab/vehicle and want to use public transport. It provides some nice views of the countryside.
The nearest airports are both Jaipur and New Delhi Airports. One can land on any of those (both famous tourist places) and take a private cab/taxi to reach here.
Exploring the temple
Placed in the lap of Aravali hills, it is surrounded by a densely forested area.
You have to take a ticket from the forest department to enter here. The temple is located just beside the main road to Bala Fort. After around a kilometre from the forest gate area, you will see a few stairs going down towards the temple.
We went there in the morning and if you are lucky you will find a few monkeys, and deer and hear a lot of chirping from the birds coming from the forest.
We were greeted by a large Sambar deer. They are one of the largest species of deer native to the Indian subcontinent. Look at that magnificent antlers. It seemed like he enjoys mud baths. We were surprised to see that he was not afraid of us and kept standing even when we tried approaching it. But we kept our distance, no way we were going anywhere close to those dangerous antlers.
Anyways, we came down the stairs and reached the temple complex. Fortunately, it was not that crowded and we had a nice darshan, the priest put a tilak on our foreheads while reciting a shlok in the Sanskrit language.
We missed the morning aarti and found out that devotees come for the morning aarti in large numbers. Anyways, we explored the temple complex and saw a lot of idols installed on the premises.
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The architecture of the temple is beautiful and like most temples, there are many deities installed there like the God Hanuman, Shiva and Krishna.
One of the most striking images I took is of a locked door covered with bright red chunri, which is offered to Goddess Durga, especially during the Navratri festival. I found it very powerful and artistic at the same time.
The left part of the temple complex was dedicated to Lord Shiva. There were two Lingum one made up of the iconic Black rock and the other from white marble. Both of these were surrounded by various deities and gods.
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When we were going back to the stairs to where we parked our car we saw another Sambar. It was a female which was evident from the lack of antlers.
It was standing on top of an old platform which had a domed chhatri with the architectural style of the Mughal era. The ceiling of the dome had many illustrations and scenes depicting people doing many activities and performing rituals.
It also had paintings of the local flora and fauna found in this forest.
We took the small trek up the hill to reach our car. We were delighted to visit this beautiful place in the middle of the forest. We were greeted by a small group of monkeys as well. It was a perfect getaway from our busy city lives.
Let me know what are your thoughts about the place. Would you like to visit this place when/if you come to Rajasthan? I know I would come back again, there are still a lot of places to explore around this place. I would love to take a jungle safari as well and see some Tiger in the wild. This place is oozing with culture and nature. A great place to know more about our culture and experience raw nature including some exotic Sambar and birds.
Namaste 🙏
Stay tuned for more episodes...
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