Mandir Shri Kale Hanuman Ji Maharaj, Chandi ki Taksal

Tucked into the narrow Chandi ki Taksal lane of Jaipur's walled city, only a few minutes on foot from Hawa Mahal and the Govind Dev Ji temple, Mandir Shri Kale Hanuman Ji Maharaj is one of the old town's most quietly beloved shrines.

• What sets it apart is immediately visible: the presiding image of Hanuman is carved and coated in deep black, rather than the vermilion-orange that covers most Hanuman idols across India.
• Devotees affectionately call the deity Kale Hanuman Ji, "the Black Hanuman," and the dark, silver-embellished murti gives the small sanctum an intimate, almost otherworldly hush that larger hilltop temples cannot match.
• The lane itself carries history in its name.
• "Chandi ki Taksal" means the silver mint, and this pocket of the old city is where coins were once struck in the era of the Kachhwaha rulers.
• Local tradition holds that worship here is older than the planned city of Jaipur, laid out in 1727 by Sawai Jai Singh II, and oral accounts link the site to an ascetic named Baba Nirmal Das who is said to have meditated on Hanuman at this spot.
• These are devotional traditions rather than documented dates, and the temple you see today has been rebuilt and adorned over generations; still, the sense of a very old, continuously living shrine is genuine.
• This is a working neighbourhood temple, not a monument, so it fills with regulars at dawn and again for the evening aarti, and swells on Tuesdays and Saturdays, the days sacred to Hanuman.
• Expect close quarters, ringing bells, marigold and the tap of the pujari's tray rather than sweeping courtyards.
• For vegetarian travellers the setting could hardly be easier.
• Jaipur's old city is emphatically veg-friendly, and this temple sits inside one of India's great sweet-and-snack districts.
• Prasad here is simple and vegetarian, and within a short walk you are among pure-vegetarian institutions such as Laxmi Misthan Bhandar in Johari Bazaar.
• Carry a bottle of water, and note that leather items are best left outside the sanctum.
• Do not confuse this shrine with Jaipur's two other famous Hanuman sites: Khole-ke-Hanuman, a sprawling hillside complex on the city's eastern edge, and Garh Ganesh, the ridge temple above the old city.
• Kale Hanuman Ji at Chandi ki Taksal is a compact, easily-missed doorway rewarding those who wander the walled-city bazaars slowly.
• Pair it with Hawa Mahal, the City Palace and a stroll through Johari Bazaar, and give it fifteen to thirty unhurried minutes.