Shirdi

Shirdi was an ordinary village in the Deccan when a young faqir arrived around 1858 and stayed until his death in 1918. Sai Baba never explained where he came from or which religion he belonged to; he lived in a ruined mosque he called Dwarkamai, kept a fire burning in it, quoted the Quran and the Hindu scriptures interchangeably, and repeated that God is one. A century later he draws crowds comparable to Tirupati, and the village has become a temple town of hotels, prasad shops and queue halls.

The Samadhi Mandir, completed in 1922 over his tomb inside a building begun as a private shrine, is the centre; behind it, Dwarkamai still holds his stone seat, his grinding wheel and the dhuni whose ash is distributed as udi, a fire kept alight since his own lifetime. Across the lane the Chavadi is where he slept on alternate nights and where a palanquin procession still goes every Thursday evening. Four aartis punctuate the day, starting with Kakad at half past four in the morning, when the queues are shortest and the singing is at its rawest.

Most pilgrims add Shani Shingnapur, seventy kilometres away, a village whose houses famously have no doors.