Alopi Devi Mandir

Getting there

• By air

  The nearest airport is Prayagraj Airport in Bamrauli, about 12 km from the city centre.

• By train

  Prayagraj Junction is one of the main railway junctions in northern India and the headquarters of the North Central Railway zone.

Why devotees come here

Alopi Devi Mandir stands in Alopibagh, Prayagraj, near the Sangam where the Ganges and Yamuna meet. There is no statue inside. Devotees worship a wooden carriage, or doli, linked to a bride who vanished.

Oral tradition tells of a wedding procession that passed through a dense forest, at a time when the region was covered in woods and infested with dacoits. Robbers attacked the party. When they opened the bride's carriage, they found no one inside, and the bride was said to have vanished. A temple came up where this happened, and locals began to worship the bride as Alopi Devi.

Local belief also ties the name Alopi to a part of Sati's body said to have fallen at this spot. The claim is debatable, because Prayagraj's only Shakti Peeth is the Lalita Devi temple, where Sati's fingers are said to have fallen. Even so, thousands of people in the area still share every festival, marriage, birth and death with her as their guardian deity.

The Maratha warrior Shreenath Mahadji Shinde developed the Sangam place during his stay at Prayagraj in 1771 to 1772. Maharani Baizabai Scindia later did renovation work on the Sangam ghats and temples in the 1800s. The temple's following has grown since the 1990s, and that growth led to large-scale renovation of the area around it.

Tips for your visit

• The bride legend comes from oral tradition, so read it as local belief rather than recorded history.
• The Kumbh Mela grounds are near the temple.

Questions people ask