Vishalakshi Temple (Shakti Peeth)

Tucked into the labyrinth of lanes just north-west of the Kashi Vishwanath complex, the Vishalakshi Temple is one of the most spiritually charged corners of Varanasi's old city.

• It honours the goddess Vishalakshi ("the wide-eyed one"), an aspect of Parvati, and is counted among the 51 Shakti Peethas of the subcontinent.
• Legend holds that when Sati's body was scattered across the land, her earring — or, by some tellings, her eye — fell here, sanctifying the spot near Mir Ghat on the western bank of the Ganga.
• Pilgrims count Vishalakshi as the fifth of the nine Gauris of Kashi, a garland of goddess shrines walked during Navaratri, and the small doorway draws a steady stream of devotees who pause here on their way to the Ganga.
• What gives the temple its unmistakable character is its guardianship.
• Since the nineteenth century it has been built, rebuilt and lovingly maintained by the Nattukottai Nagarathar (Nagarathar) community — the Chettiar merchant-bankers of Tamil Nadu — who installed a black-stone idol of the goddess and set the shrine in a haveli-like form crowned with a modest gopura in the Dravidian manner.
• Priests here often chant in the South-Indian tradition, and the annual temple festival falls on Kajali Tritiya in the month of Bhadrapada, when women sing the rain-season Kajali songs and gather to pray for the welfare of their families.
• This meeting of Tamil devotion and Banarasi ground makes Vishalakshi feel like a small piece of the deep south transplanted into the Kashi galis.
• A visit is best woven into a slow morning walk through the old city.
• Entry is free and the shrine is compact, so most travellers spend only ten to twenty minutes here, but the surrounding warren of lanes — with its incense sellers, brass shops and glimpses of the river between the buildings — rewards unhurried wandering.
• Dress modestly, leave your footwear at the marked stands outside, and follow the lead of the priests regarding photography inside the sanctum, which is generally not permitted.
• The nearby Manikarnika cremation ground is treated with quiet reverence by Kashi's residents; keep your camera lowered and your voice soft as you pass.
• Vegetarian travellers could hardly ask for a friendlier neighbourhood.
• This is the satvik heart of Kashi, where meat and alcohol simply have no place in the temple lanes, and the surrounding gullies brim with pure-vegetarian legends.
• A few steps away, the famous Ksheer Sagar ladles thick, fruit-crowned lassi into earthen kulhads, while Kashi Chat Bhandar and Deena Chaat Bhandar keep the tongue-tingling tamatar chaat and palak-tikki tradition alive.
• Ram Bhandar in nearby Thatheri Bazar serves crisp kachori-sabzi and syrupy jalebi that make an ideal post-darshan breakfast — all of it prepared without egg, meat or fish, in keeping with the deeply vegetarian ethos of the old town.