Delhi: Akshardham Temple Tour and Musical Fountain Show

The temple that took five years and no steel

Akshardham was completed in 2005 on the east bank of the Yamuna, and the numbers are the easiest way into it: 234 carved pillars, 148 stone elephants each different, nine domes, and not a gram of structural steel or concrete anywhere in the main monument.

It was built from Rajasthani pink sandstone and Italian Carrara marble by traditional shilpa shastra methods — stone cut, carved and fitted the way temples were built a thousand years ago — by around seven thousand craftsmen and a great many volunteers.

Whether it moves you or not, it is a remarkable thing to see attempted in the twenty-first century.

The evening

Pickup from your hotel in an air-conditioned car. Your guide explains the construction on the way, which is useful, because the building itself has very little signage.

Inside, the Mandir with its carved ambulatory, the Gajendra Pith plinth of elephants at the base — 3,000 tonnes of stone telling elephant stories from Indian mythology — and the Narayan Sarovar, the tank ringed by 108 brass cow heads and filled with water from 151 sacred rivers and lakes.

The musical fountain

After dark on the Yagnapurush Kund, the largest stepwell of its kind, built in 2,870 steps around a central lotus. Water, light and sound run a show of about fifteen minutes retelling a story from the Upanishads.

Read this before you go

Security is airport-grade and the prohibited list is absolute: no phones, no cameras, no bags, no electronics, no food. There are free cloakrooms at the gate, and the queue for them is the longest part of the evening. Leave everything in the car if you can.

Modest dress is required — shoulders and knees covered for everyone. Wraps are lent at the entrance.

Closed Mondays. The complex shuts fairly early, so the fountain show is the last thing of the night.

Photography is impossible inside. That is the rule and it is worth knowing beforehand rather than at the gate.