Pilgrim spots in New Delhi – Capital of India
Are you a frequent visitor of New Delhi or have gone for a stay along with your ward for his recent job at Delhi, Noida or Gurgaon and wanted to visit the pilgrim spots on your spare time or week end here is the list of pilgrim spots at Delhi.
Introduction:
I have seen many people from rural parts of country moving to New Delhi when their first generation wards are employed in MNCs around Delhi like Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad etc and wanted to spend time religiously at their spare time or week end and I used to discuss about various pilgrim spots while on travel to them as I have visited many places in Delhi whenever I visited on my official visits for the past 20 years.
So this will be my visits to pilgrim spots and at the same time making aware of people about these places.My various pilgrim visits in the capital of India
On my first visit to Delhi, as my stay was nearer to R.K. Puram I happened to visit the temples Malai Mandir and Balaji Mandir.
Malai Mandir: This is also called Uttar Swami Malai as it resembles Swami Malai of Tamil Nadu and is located in the hills near R.K. Puram and main deity is Lord Muruga and other deities are Lord Shiva, Parvathy and Vinayaka. This place is really worth spending on all of the pooja hours.
Balaji Mandir: This is for the Lord Venkateshwara and all the poojas are as per the south Indian Style and really one can enjoy the dharshan of Balaji in a leisure way and when I visited, it is almost at the end of the morning pooja hour nearing 12.00 noon and had a good dharshan by sitting in an organized row and they distributed prasadam after the pooja in the same row of sitting which is really a good experience.
On my next visits, I got down at Agra after visited Taj Mahal, visited the near pilgrim spots Mathura and Vrindavan. As I had got down in the Railway Station took autorickshaw and visited these places but these can be reached from Delhi by any tourists providers (Panicker travels, south Indian Travels are few to quote). Mathura is a place of Lord Krishna's birth place and there is a new temple for Krishna, Radha and Rukmani which is big and the birth place is old temple is at the back of the new Temple. From there, I have visited to vrindavan which was supposed to be a big garden where Krishna had played and passed his childhood time with friends and gopikas. At some distance, one has to stop riding from any vehicle and walk with a bare foot as this place is considered holy as the place of Krishna and it is really crowded with many people living/residing by spending their last days after certain age and hence it is only holy but not that much maintained.
In my next visit, since my stay was only one day, I planned for a visit to Lotus temple which is Bahai's place of worship for all religions without any discrimination of caste,creed etc and the place is look like a blossom of lotus and a big complex is worth seeing and have a good mediation in the hall.
When I happened to visit Delhi next time, my devotional mentor made a mention of Connaught place to be visited which is a temple for Hanuman and present here as a carving rock and visited on a Thursday and so not much crowded and deity is always filled with sendhur and hence looked like a orange. So I visited here 3 times on my other visits also. This place can be reached from any place of Delhi as it is well connected by city buses and every one helped us in showing this temple. In the same complex there exists another south Indian temple which is also worth visiting with many deities.
After one or two visits I just visited again the same RK puram temples along with another temples of Kamakshi Amman Temple and Vaikunta Nathar Temple(deity Vishnu) and all are of south Indian style termples and one can cover all the temples by city bus in a single day. I also visited Connaught place in the evening of Tuesday which is really a crowded day as people at Delhi making Tuesday as the day for Hanuman and on that day, women are not allowed beyond certain point where as men are allowed near to deity. These days, our stomach will be filled with sweets as every one will share sweets as prasadams of god.
After certain gap of years, when I travelled in train to Delhi, then I made a mention about this to my co passenger who is also newly commuted to south delhi on her transfer to Delhi that my office premises has been shifted to South Delhi and she made a mention about Chattarpur temple of Hanuman. Then after reached my destination, I made an enquiry about this temple, they were told that this is not only one temple but cluster of temples which made me curious to visit on the next day early morning.On my visit, I found Chattarpur Mandir, as a renowned pilgrimage destination visited by thousands of devotees. This temples is with a deity called Shree Adya Katyayani sixth avatar of Lord Durga who is also known as Mahishasuramardhini after killing of asura, mahishasura. The temple also has many deities of Durga, Lord Shiva, Lord Narayan, MahaLakshmi and Vinayak, Nagheshwar and nearer is the long 60 feet Hanuman which are worth visiting. There after whenever I had visited Delhi definitely make a visit to this place. This place is nearer to Qutub Minar and well connected.When I visited this place, this cluster of temples are in a big complex and supposed to be the largest in India constructed by a Babaji who is now no more and his samathy is also inside the complex. But now, after the construction of Akshardham in Noida, Delhi, this is second largest and I have no opportunity to visit this Akshardham but heard that one should make a visit to this place in their life time.
And my last visit to Delhi, I had travelled to Haridwar and Rishikesh by South Indian Travels which accompany us in the night and leave us in the early morning at Rishikesh and one can take rest for one hour and fresh up took us to different meditation halls, Ram Jula, Lakshman Jula and Mandirs with a good break fast and from there they are dropping us in Haridwar and one can really enjoy the holy river Ganges bath and good lunch and to Manasa Devi temple by winch and return to Delhi on the night with a good dinner.Conclusion:
I hope my above article would definitely give reader an idea of temples to visit in Delhi and around and there are many places like Birla Mandir, ISKCON etc in Delhi to make people devotional visits.
In my article I have shared that I have not visited Akshardham but I have visited this temple about 7 years ago by Metro train as Delhi is now well connected by Metro. Also I visited the Hanuman Temple in near Karol Bagh which is now shown as icon of Delhi Metro and even in the film PK when heroine returned from Europe to Delhi this Hanuman is shown such that she reached Delhi.
This hanuman is very taller and one can see evening arathi when his heart is open and inside Ram and Sita . And one more temple in Aero city too which is really a striking blue to look glue.