ISKCON Jaipur (Sri Sri Giridhari Dauji Temple)

A dozen kilometres southwest of the walled Pink City, in what was until recently the farming village of Dholai, ISKCON Jaipur rises in carved pink sandstone off New Sanganer Road.

• Officially Sri Sri Giridhari Dauji Mandir — and known to Jaipur's devotees as Gupt Vrindavan, the hidden Vrindavan — it is unusual among Gaudiya Vaishnava shrines in that the presiding pair on the altar is not Radha and Krishna but the brothers Krishna and Balaram: Giridhari, who lifted Govardhan hill, and Dauji, the elder.
• Sri Sri Gaura Nitai, Sri Sri Radha Madan Mohan and a Giriraj Govardhan shila share the hall, but brotherhood is the theme here, and it lends the place a warmth quite distinct from Jaipur's older royal Krishna temples.
• What visitors tend to remember, though, is the light.
• Ranged along the walls are stained-glass windows roughly eleven feet tall, each assembled from several thousand individually cut pieces of coloured glass by the Melbourne master glassworker Colin Greenwood — an idiom borrowed from European cathedrals and turned entirely to episodes from Krishna's life.
• By mid-morning the floor is pooled with cobalt, saffron and green.
• The temple describes the scheme as its Windows to the Spiritual World gallery, and it is, quite deliberately, not what you expect a Rajasthani temple to look like from the inside.
• ISKCON's presence in Jaipur dates to 1991, but this building took decades to arrive.
• Srila Prabhupada had written in 1975 of wanting a Krishna-Balaram temple in Jaipur to echo the one he had built at Vrindavan, and the mandir that finally opened in 2019 is the fulfilment of that single line.
• The campus now also holds a goshala at Dholai, a guest house, the Vrindavan Haat gift stall and a community hall, and the day runs on the familiar ISKCON clock: Mangala arati at 4.30am, Shringar darshan and guru-puja around 7.30, Sandhya arati and kirtan in the early evening, with the doors closed from roughly 1pm to 4pm while the deities rest.
• For vegetarian travellers this is one of the least stressful addresses in the city.
• Everything cooked on the campus is offered food — strictly vegetarian, eggless, and prepared without onion or garlic under sattvic Vaishnava discipline — so there is no menu to interrogate.
• Govinda's, the on-site prasadam hall, opens around 9.30am and pushes North Indian, South Indian, Chinese and Italian dishes through that same kitchen.
• Sunday evenings bring a feast preceded by kirtan; on ordinary days a thali and a glass of sweetened milk are plenty.
• No alcohol is served or permitted anywhere on the grounds.
• Entry is free, on-site parking is free, and an hour covers it unless an arati or a festival draws you in.
• Dress modestly, leave your shoes at the stand, and keep the camera down in the deity hall.
• Janmashtami, when the midnight arati fills the courtyard, is the year's high point — and the one night an hour will not be enough.