p.r.bullen - travelogue - mandu and ujain

main temple in ujain Ujain is one of India's holy cities. The Mahakaleshwar Temple here houses a jyoti lingam, which have shakti (power) of themselves, unlike a normal lingam, which must be ritually invested with mantra shakti. The lingam itself is in an underground chamber below the temple you see in the center of the main courtyard of the complex.

A long passageway winds around two sides of the courtyard, with separate lines for men and women. Video monitors show what is going on in the inner sanctum, and the pilgrims are admitted in unisex batches. We didn't try to go in ourselves (I'm not even sure that we could have), but an elderly gentleman pointed out to us that you can see a bit of the sanctum from the temple above it, through a crack in the floor.

While many temples don't have the quiet spirituality that you might expect, Mahakaleshwar was a bit different, the intensity, and number, of pilgrims giving it a very strong sense of being a place of worship.

The children in yellow seemed to be a school outing, and were very well behaved.