Hinglaj Mata Templeਹਿੰਗਲਾਜ ਮਾਤਾ ਮੰਦਰ

At the end of a long desert road west of Karachi, a river cuts a narrow gorge through pale cliffs, and inside a cave in that gorge burns one of the oldest goddess shrines of the western subcontinent. Hinglaj Mata, also called Hinglaj Devi, Hingula Devi and, by local people of every faith, Nani Mandir, is a Hindu cave temple at Hinglaj on the Makran coast, in Lasbela district, Balochistan. It stands on the west bank of the Hingol River inside Hingol National Park. Devotees count it among the 51 Shakta pithas, the places where parts of the goddess Sati are believed to have fallen, and here the part is the Brahmarandhra, a part of the upper head. Its spring pilgrimage is described as the largest Hindu pilgrimage in Pakistan.

What is Hinglaj Mata Temple?

Hinglaj Mata Temple is a Hindu cave temple in Lasbela district, Balochistan, Pakistan, dedicated to the goddess as Hinglaj Mata, a form of Durga or Devi. There is no built stone temple and no carved idol at its heart. Inside a mountain cavern on the banks of the Hingol River, a stone smeared with sindoor is worshipped as the goddess herself, under names the scriptures also give as Kottari and Kottavi, with Bhimalochana as her Bhairava. The shrine is one of only two Shakta pithas in Pakistan, the other being Sharada Peeth in the Neelum Valley. Over the last three decades Hinglaj has grown into a unifying point of reference for Pakistan's Hindu communities, who travel here from Sindh, Karachi and across the country.

A cave, a river and a sacred valley

The temple sits in a narrow gorge in the Lyari Tehsil hills, about 250 kilometres northwest of Karachi, some 19 kilometres inland from the Arabian Sea and at the end of a Kirthar mountain range in the Makran desert stretch. The whole valley around it is treated as sacred, as Hinglaj herself, and commercial activity is not allowed inside it. Around the main cave stand smaller places of worship that pilgrims visit in sequence, among them Ganesh Deva, Mata Kali, Guru Gorakhnath's Dooni, Gurunanak Kharao, Ramjarokha Bethak and the Chandra Goop. Before entering the shrine, pilgrims bathe in the Hingol River, and on the way many climb the Chandragup mud volcano, worshipped as an embodiment of Shiva and called Baba Chandragup, where coconuts are thrown into the crater and sins are confessed at its rim.

Why do local Muslims call it Nani Mandir?

Hinglaj is revered well beyond the Hindu community. Local Muslims, particularly Zikri Muslims, hold the goddess in reverence and help provide security to the shrine, and they call the temple Nani Mandir, the maternal grandmother's temple. Some local people call the pilgrimage itself the Nani Ki Haj. The Sindhi Sufi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai is remembered as having made the hard journey to Hinglaj and offered milk to the goddess, and his Sur Ramkali was composed in reverence to Hinglaj Mata and the jogis who visited her. That shared reverence, across faiths in a remote desert valley, is one of the reasons Hinglaj is spoken of as a symbol of Balochistan's older, layered religious life.

The Hinglaj Yatra: Pakistan's largest Hindu pilgrimage

The annual pilgrimage, the Hinglaj Yatra or Theerth Yatra, runs for four days in April, around Navaratri season, and its main ceremony falls on the third day, when the shrine's priests recite mantras over the pilgrims' offerings, chiefly three coconuts. Pilgrim groups traditionally set out from the Nanad Panthi Akhada in Karachi, led by a holy staff bearer called the chaadiar, and Hindus of the Thar region form the largest contingent. For centuries the journey meant a trek of more than 150 kilometres on foot through desert from the nearest road. The Makran Coastal Highway, linking Karachi with Gwadar, changed that: Hinglaj is now about 328 kilometres and nearly four hours by road from Karachi, and reported pilgrim numbers have risen sharply, with a figure of 300,000 reported for the spring pilgrimage. Volunteers run vast community kitchens, temporary camps and bathing facilities for the crowds. The Hinglaj Sheva Mandali, the temple committee founded on 5 January 1986, remains the main organisation serving the shrine and its pilgrims.

A shrine that could not be moved

In 2008, Pakistan's Water and Power Development Authority proposed a dam on the Hingol River close to the shrine, which would have flooded the temple's access roads and endangered the site and its festivals. The Hindu community protested, the Balochistan Assembly asked the federal government to stop the project, and a later suggestion to relocate three holy places uphill was rejected by the Hinglaj Sheva Mandali, which argued that such sites are not ordinary temples and cannot simply be moved. In 2009 the dam site was shifted a few kilometres north to protect the temple, by agreement between the authority, the Assembly and the Hindu community. The episode is now part of the shrine's modern story: a cave that has drawn pilgrims for centuries was defended, in the end, as a place that belongs exactly where it is.

Visiting Hinglaj Mata

Most visitors come by bus or private car along the Makran Coastal Highway from Karachi, pairing the shrine with the mud volcanoes and the Hingol National Park landscape. The four April days of the yatra are the fullest and most demanding time to come, while a quieter visit outside the festival sees the gorge much as solitary pilgrims knew it. Read Hinglaj alongside Jugti's other Shakti Peeth entries, Devi Talab Mandir in Jalandhar and Kamakhya in Guwahati, and with the Salt Range complex of Katas Raj in Chakwal, the two great Hindu pilgrimages of Pakistan now standing side by side in this collection.