AT A GLANCE

Why go?

Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala is one of Karnataka's most revered and unusual pilgrimage towns, set in green, forested surroundings on the lower slopes of the Western Ghats along the Netravathi River, about 75 km east of Mangaluru in Dakshina Kannada district. At its heart is the Manjunatha Swamy Temple, an 800-year-old shrine to a Shiva linga that has drawn devotees from Karnataka, Kerala and across India for centuries. Visitors come for a serene, orderly darshan, but they leave remembering something rarer: a working example of several Indian faiths sharing one sacred ground.↗↗↗

What makes Dharmasthala singular is its confluence of traditions. The presiding deity is Hindu—Lord Manjunatha, a form of Shiva—yet the rituals are performed by Madhwa (Vaishnava) Brahmin priests, while the temple has been administered for twenty-one generations by the Jain Heggade (Pergade) family, alongside reverence for local guardian spirits, the Dharma Daivas, and a Jain basadi and monolith within the same town. This is not a museum of tolerance but a living practice: free meals for every visitor, a hereditary judge still settling disputes, and festivals that fill the complex with a hundred thousand lamps.