Deoghar

Baba Baidyanath Dham is both a jyotirlinga and a shakti peetha, which makes Deoghar one of the most charged pilgrimage sites in eastern India. The main temple, its shikhara topped by the panchshool, five iron tridents said to be unique to this shrine, stands in a walled compound with twenty-one subsidiary temples around it; the ritual of tying red and yellow threads between the Baidyanath and Parvati temples is what couples come here to do. The Shravan Mela, running through the lunar month that falls in July and August, is the reason Deoghar is known across the country.

Pilgrims fill copper pots with Ganga water at Sultanganj in Bihar and walk the 105 kilometres to Deoghar barefoot along a road painted saffron and lit day and night, an unbroken river of people that can total several million over the month. Come outside Shravan and the town is calm enough to enjoy. Climb or ride the ropeway up Trikut Pahar for a view across the Santhal Parganas, walk the Tapovan caves where the sage Balananda meditated, see the marble Naulakha Mandir built in the 1940s in the shape of Bengal's Belur Math, and take the evening air on Nandan Pahar.

Deoghar's peda, dense and milky, is worth carrying home by the boxful.