Braj Yatra — Mathura, Vrindavan & Gokul

Braj — the land of Krishna's childhood — is a compact stretch of the Yamuna plain in western Uttar Pradesh where almost every village keeps the memory of a leela. This route walks its heart: five darshans across three towns. It begins in Mathura at Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi, raised over the prison cell where the Lord was born to Devaki and Vasudeva on the eighth night of Bhadrapada's dark fortnight, and moves through the old city to Shri Dwarkadhish Mandir — built in 1814 and served in the Pushtimarg seva-krama of Vallabhacharya's sampradaya. Dwarkadhish stands a few steps from Vishram Ghat, the principal ghat of Mathura, where tradition holds that Krishna rested after slaying Kansa, and from which the city's ghat parikrama both starts and ends. Come back to the ghat at dusk: the Yamuna aarti is lit each evening around seven, lamps set on paan leaves are floated out on the current, and the whole riverfront turns to flame and sound. Give Mathura an unhurried half-day and it repays you — the twenty-five ghats, the old bazaars and their peda shops, and a boat pushed out onto the water while the aarti burns behind you.

About eleven to fifteen kilometres upriver lies Vrindavan, which holds the next two darshans. Shri Banke Bihari Mandir enshrines the deity brought forth in the grove of Nidhivan by the sixteenth-century saint-musician Swami Haridas; his samadhi is the first small shrine you meet as you enter Nidhivan, and the grove is locked every evening after aarti — the priests leave Radha's bed made in the Rang Mahal and withdraw, for by custom no one witnesses the night there. Shri Rangji Mandir, consecrated in 1851, carries the Sri Vaishnava tradition of Ranganathaswamy at Srirangam into Braj, its south-Indian gopuram and gilded dhwaja-stambha standing improbably in the Yamuna plain; and Prem Mandir, completed in 2012 by Jagadguru Kripalu Maharaj, closes the Vrindavan leg in white marble and its nightly wash of colour and light. Between temples, walk down to the river — Kesi Ghat, where Krishna bathed after killing the horse-demon Keshi, and Kaliya Ghat, where the hollow kadamba still stands from which he leapt onto the serpent Kaliya's hoods. Then cross to Gokul on the far bank, some ten to fifteen kilometres from Mathura, where the infancy leelas belong: Nanda Baba's house, Brahmand Ghat, and the soft sands of Raman Reti in which pilgrims still roll.

Three towns and five temples make a comfortable two-day yatra, three if you take it slowly — but Braj reaches well beyond them. Govardhan lies about twenty-one kilometres west of Mathura, and its parikrama is the region's great walk: a circuit of 21 km (seven kos) that begins and ends at Danghati or Mansi Ganga and passes Radha Kund and Shyam Kund, Kusum Sarovar and Govind Kund. Pilgrims walk it barefoot and clockwise, keeping the hill always on the right and never climbing it, for Giriraj is worshipped as Krishna's own form; five to six hours is a fair estimate on foot. Barsana, about forty-five kilometres from Mathura, is Radha's own town, her Shriji (Ladli Ji) temple crowning the Bhanugarh hill — and about a week before Holi it becomes the stage of Lathmar Holi, the women of Barsana driving off the men of Nandgaon with staves, the compliment returned at Nandgaon the next day. The complete form of all this is the Braj Chaurasi Kos parikrama, the eighty-four-kos circuit of Braj Mandal — roughly 252 km through twelve vans, twenty-four upvans and twenty kunds, made as a seven-day journey by road or, in the older way, on foot over weeks, most auspiciously in Kartik. October to March is the kindest season; avoid May and June, when the plain crosses 40°C and can approach 45°C. Janmashtami and the Holi week are Braj at its most beautiful and its most crowded — book months ahead, and confirm every temple's darshan hours before you set out, since they shift with the season.