Dwarkadhish Temple

The submerged city

The tradition is specific: Krishna built a great city here, and when he died the sea took it back. This is not a vague legend — texts describe the city, its gates and its scale.

Marine archaeology off this coast has found submerged structures — stone blocks, what appear to be walls and jetties, in shallow water near the modern town. Surveys by the National Institute of Oceanography from the 1980s onward recovered material and mapped features.

What that material actually is remains contested. Dating is difficult in shallow marine conditions, and interpretations range from a genuine ancient port to natural formations and later harbour works. Anyone telling you it definitively confirms the Mahabharata account is going beyond the evidence, and so is anyone dismissing it entirely.

What is not in doubt is that this coast held significant ancient ports, and that the site has been continuously important for a very long time.

The temple and its flag

The Dwarkadhish or Jagat Mandir stands five storeys on seventy-two carved pillars, with a spire rising around seventy-eight metres above the Gomti creek where it meets the Arabian Sea. The present structure is largely fifteenth and sixteenth century on much older foundations; parts are attributed to the Chalukya period.

Above it flies a triangular flag — the Dwajaji — bearing the sun and moon, and it is changed five times every day. Not once, five times. The right to make the flag and perform the change belongs to particular families, the cloth is donated by devotees, and the queue to sponsor a change runs months long.

The flag is roughly fifty-two yards of cloth and the climb to change it is made by hand. Watching one of the five is a small, unglamorous, entirely genuine thing and takes ten minutes.

There are two gates: Swarga Dwar (gate of heaven) for entry and Moksha Dwar (gate of liberation) for exit. Fifty-six steps lead up from the Gomti ghat.

Bet Dwarka and Nageshwar

Bet Dwarka is an island about 30 km north, reached by ferry from Okha, and is held to be where Krishna actually lived rather than ruled. The temple there is where the Sudama story is set — the poor childhood friend who arrives with a handful of beaten rice. It is a rougher, less polished pilgrimage than the main temple and better for it. A new signature bridge now connects the island, changing the visit considerably.

Nageshwar, between Dwarka and Bet Dwarka, is one of the twelve Jyotirlingas — marked by an enormous seated Shiva figure visible from the road long before the temple. It takes twenty minutes and it completes a set.

Rukmini Devi temple, 2 km out, is architecturally the finest thing in the area — twelfth century, and separated from the main temple by a story about a sage's curse that explains why husband and wife are worshipped apart.

Gopi Talav and the yellow clay taken from it, and the Sudama Setu footbridge across the creek, fill an afternoon.

Dwarka in a Gujarat itinerary

Dwarka is at the far western tip of Saurashtra and is almost always visited on a loop rather than alone.

Somnath is 230 km south — the first Jyotirlinga, destroyed and rebuilt seven times. With Nageshwar that gives two Jyotirlingas and a Char Dham on one coastal drive.

Porbandar, Gandhi's birthplace, sits between them.

Gir, for wild Asiatic lions, is inland from Somnath.

Janmashtami in August or September is Dwarka's great festival and the town is transformed. It is also the hardest time to find a bed — book many months ahead.