Sant Singaji Samadhi Temple

Set amid the wide black-soil plains of the Nimar region in Khandwa district, the Sant Singaji Samadhi Temple marks the resting place of one of Madhya Pradesh's most beloved folk saints, and the settlement that grew around it now carries his name — Sant Singaji Nagar.

• Singaji, by tradition a shepherd-poet of the Nimari countryside who is generally placed in the sixteenth century, belonged to the nirguna bhakti stream that sang of a formless divine and dismissed distinctions of caste and creed.
• His pithy Hindi-Nimari verses, still recited across the region, earned him a devoted following in his lifetime, and his samadhi became a focus of pilgrimage soon after.
• Because firm biographical dates are scarce, most accounts of his life are best read as living oral tradition rather than settled history.
• The shrine itself is unassuming — a whitewashed samadhi complex rather than a soaring tower — but its pull is enormous.
• Pilgrims come year-round to bow at the saint's samadhi, but the temple's great moment is its annual fair, one of the largest religious gatherings in the Nimar-Malwa belt, when tens of thousands of villagers, folk singers and devotees converge for several days of bhajan, satsang and community feasting.
• Ox-carts, tractor-trolleys and buses roll in from across Khandwa, Khargone and Dewas; a temporary bazaar of bangles, brass, farm tools and sweets springs up around the temple; and the air fills with the drums and cymbals of Singaji's songs.
• For travellers on the wider Omkareshwar and Narmada circuit, it is a rare window into rural Malwa's living devotional culture, well off the standard tourist track and all the more rewarding for it.
• Food here is simple, hearty and entirely vegetarian, in keeping with the pilgrim setting.
• During the fair, community kitchens and bhandaras serve free prasad — usually dal, sabzi, puri or bati and a sweet — while the year-round options are modest pure-veg dhabas and bhojanalayas near the temple gate dishing out Nimari thalis of dal-bati-churma, wheat rotis, seasonal vegetables and buttermilk.
• For a fuller choice of pure-veg thali restaurants, sabudana-poha stalls and sweet shops, the market towns of Harsud and Khandwa on the way in are your best bet.