Chiksauli — Chitra (Chitralekha) Sakhi Village

Of the eight principal sakhis who ring Barsana like petals of a lotus, Chitra Sakhi — often called Chitralekha — is remembered as the artist among Radharani's companions.

• Tradition holds that she was gifted in painting, in designing ornaments and dress, and in reading the moods of the grove, and that Radha would come to her hamlet to be lovingly decorated before Her meetings with Krishna.
• The little village that keeps her memory, Chiksauli, is said to have been known in older days as Chitrasali, and devotees repeat the gentle legend that Radha's own 'painting school' once stood here on the quiet back slope of the Barsana ridge, near the enclosed pond of Krishna Kund.
• Be clear-eyed about the physical reality: this is a modest, intimate sakhi shrine in a farming hamlet, not a soaring temple.
• Chiksauli lies roughly a mile southwest of Barsana proper, and the small Chitra Sakhi Mandir sits along the lane toward the Ras Mandir area.
• It is a legend-marker and a place of remembrance more than a monument — its power is in the sentiment (bhava) it carries, not in scale or ornament.
• Note the geography too: the forest of Gahvar Van and Krishna Kund lie within the same Chiksauli grama, so pilgrims often fold this sakhi darshan into a wider Chiksauli-and-Gahvar walk rather than treating it as a separate destination.
• For the devotee, the appeal is the ashta-sakhi tradition itself: circling the hamlets of Chitra, Lalita, Vishakha and the others is a way of honouring the confidantes whose seva made Radha-Krishna's pastimes possible.
• Chitra's gift — creativity offered as service — makes her shrine a quiet favourite of artists, decorators and those who seek inspiration.
• Vegetarian travellers are entirely at home in Braj, which is pure-vegetarian by long custom, but Barsana and its sakhi villages are small pilgrim settlements with only basic tea-and-snack stalls; the verified pure-veg kitchens you can rely on are back in Mathura and Vrindavan, so carry prasad, fruit or packed food for the day.
• One firm caution: greater Braj is a heavy bhang (cannabis) belt, and bhang-laced thandai or lassi can look and be named exactly like an ordinary one — never accept a 'special' thandai from an unknown stall, especially around Holi.
• Plan on a short, reflective stop.
• The lanes are narrow, the shrine is simple, and the reward is the atmosphere of an unhurried Braj hamlet where a beloved friend of Radha is still remembered by name.