Char Dham

While India has innumerable religious sites and temples, we Hindus consider four pilgrimages as essential in one’s lifetime. There is one site/temple in each of the four directions. Thus we have: 

• Badrinath (Uttarakhand) in the north which is the place where Vishnu as NarNarayan performed tapasya. 

• Rameshwaram (Tamil Nadu) in the south is the spot where Ramchandra ji, on his return from Lanka, prayed to Shivji for absolution of any and all sins committed in the war and especially from brahminhatya when he killed Ravan.  

• Dwarka (Gujarat) in the West is where Krishna ji made his kingdom after leaving Mathura and Vrindavan. 

• The fourth is Jagannath Puri (Odisha) in the east, which is dedicated to Krishna ji.

Incidentally, Badrinath is also one of the four Dhams in Uttarakhand, the other three being Kedarnath (a jyotirling), Gangotri (the source of the River Ganga) and Yamunotri (the source of the Yamuna river).