Chandra Sarovar, Parasoli

Cupped in the quiet farmland south of Govardhan town, at the village of Parasoli (also spelt Parsauli), Chandra Sarovar is one of Braj's most atmospheric and least crowded ponds.

• Its name means the "lake of the moon," and the tradition attached to it is unusually tender: this is held to be the setting of Krishna's Vasant (spring) rasa, a dance so enchanting that Chandra, the moon-god, was said to have halted overhead, stunned into stillness, so that a single night stretched into a night of Brahma.
• Pilgrims are told that Krishna rested on these banks at dawn once the rasa was done.
• Unlike the marble-stepped grandeur of nearby Kusum Sarovar, Chandra Sarovar keeps a soft, meditative plainness — reeds, still water, a low parikrama path and open sky.
• What makes the site doubly beloved is its literary heritage.
• The blind poet-saint Surdas — one of the Ashtachhap, the eight master-poets of the Pushtimarg founded by Shri Vallabhacharya — is remembered as having settled here to contemplate the pastimes of Radha and Krishna.
• Tradition holds he spent his last decades at Parasoli and left his body here, and the modest shrine known as Sur Kuti (with the associated Sur Kund and Surdas's samadhi) marks the place.
• His devotional masterwork, the Sursagar, is deeply woven into the memory of this ground.
• The sarovar sits along the outer sweep of Govardhan Hill, roughly two kilometres beyond Anyor village, and about 22 km west of Mathura.
• In recent years the development authority has added a walking path around the water, a baradari pavilion, an open amphitheatre, parking, toilets and plantation — a gentle upgrade that has kept the place calm rather than commercial.
• There is no entry fee and no ticket; it is open ground that a pilgrim can walk to freely, and it pairs naturally with a Govardhan parikrama.
• For the vegetarian traveller, all of Braj is pure-vegetarian by long custom and municipal norm, and Parasoli has only simple stalls — carry your own water and prasad, as verified pure-veg kitchens are back in Mathura and Vrindavan.
• One firm caution: Mathura-Braj is a heavy bhang (cannabis) region, and thandai or lassi sold at roadside stalls near temples and ghats can be laced with bhang under an almost identical name.
• Never accept an unlabelled thandai from a wayside vendor; stick to trusted, named pure-veg halwais.
• Come at first light or in the last hour before dusk, when the water mirrors the sky; on Sharad Purnima, the autumn full-moon night, the lake draws devotees who sit by its edge recalling the rasa and Surdas's verses.