Omkareshwar

The Narmada narrows here between rocky banks and parts around Mandhata, an island two kilometres long whose outline, seen from above, is said to form the syllable Om. Pilgrims cross from the town by the old suspension bridge or by boat to the Omkareshwar temple, where the Jyotirlinga sits in a low stone sanctum and the crowd presses in with Narmada water and bilva leaves. Across the river the Mamleshwar temple, a Paramara-period building with a carved shikhara, is counted with Omkareshwar as a single Jyotirlinga, so darshan means both.

What sets the place apart is the parikrama, a seven-kilometre circuit of the island that climbs past the Siddhanath temple, a ruined Paramara shrine on the hilltop with a frieze of elephants around its plinth, along ridges of scrub and rock with the river far below, then down to the sangam where the Kaveri, the arm of the Narmada that makes Mandhata an island, rejoins the main river. Ghats on both banks host the evening aarti and lamp floating; the Gauri Somnath temple holds a huge lingam that legend says once showed the future. The 108-foot statue of Adi Shankaracharya at Ekatmata Dham, raised in 2023 on the hill where the young philosopher is said to have met his guru Govinda Bhagavatpada, has given the town a new skyline.

Boats run up to the dam and back; the Omkareshwar dam upstream has calmed the river, but the rocks and pools below the temple still ring with bathers.