Hindu temples covered here

By two things together: how many people are looking for a temple, and how badly the pages currently answering them do it. A temple with heavy demand whose own website does not appear in the results is a higher priority than a quieter one that already publishes clearly. Reader requests move a temple up the list.

Both, in that order. Large temples come first because they send the most people to the least reliable pages, but the problem is worse at smaller temples, not better. A neighbourhood mandir with no website at all is exactly the case where a visitor has nowhere to check.

Because it is the fastest way to read the list. Entry rules, dress enforcement, public holidays and festival calendars follow the country more closely than anything else, so knowing where a temple is tells you most of what to expect before you open its page.

A hub page holding the whole picture, and separate pages beneath it for timings, dress code, entry rules, prasad, how to reach the gate and festivals. They are separate because people search for them separately, and a single long page forces someone after one fact to read past five others.

Every temple sits under its ISO country code and then its state, so Somnath is at /in/gujarat/somnath/ and Pashupatinath at /np/bagmati/pashupatinath/, with its inner pages beneath that. The country and state pages above each temple list everything covered there. Temple names repeat around the world, and the country and state keep them apart without making the address unreadable.

So the page is usable immediately on a phone rather than loading dozens of photographs you may never scroll to. Every temple is in the page already and every link is followable; the button only reveals what is there. Without JavaScript the whole list simply shows at once.

Yes, and it is the fastest way to change what gets covered next. Send the temple name and its town through the contact page. If you also say what you could not find out about it, that decides which of its pages gets written first.

Timings are rechecked against the temple's own source at intervals, and outside that whenever a festival period or an announced change makes the existing answer doubtful. The date of the last check is shown on the page rather than kept out of sight.

Because the temple publishes nothing, or publishes something that contradicts itself, and no honest source exists to quote. Saying so is the accurate answer. Filling the gap with a plausible time would make the page look finished and send somebody to a locked gate.

Where a Hindu temple operates as a ticketed monument with published visiting hours, it belongs here as much as an active temple does, and often the practical questions are sharper: opening hours, tickets, what you may carry and which parts are closed.

No. There are no scores, no stars and no ordering by importance. The list is a register, not a ranking, and nothing about a temple's position on this page says anything about the temple.

Enough to set your expectations before you open the page. It tells you which festival calendar applies, which public holidays could close the temple, roughly how strictly a dress code is likely to be enforced, and whether published opening hours are usual in that country or unusual. None of that is a substitute for the temple's own page, but it is the right first filter.

Yes. Each image shows the temple it sits under, chosen so the building is recognisable at card size rather than for being the prettiest photograph available. Every one is used under an open licence with its photographer credited, and none of them are decorative stock images of somewhere else.

Because the register is small enough to read, and a search box over a short list is a way of hiding things rather than finding them. When the list outgrows a page, it will be split by country first, since that is how people already think about where they are going.

Yes, freely, and deep links to a temple page or to one of its inner pages are welcome without asking. A link to a temple's timings page is more useful to whoever you send it to than a link to this register, which they then have to search.

Not by itself. Some temples restrict entry to Hindus, some close the sanctum to the general queue, and some operate as ticketed monuments rather than active places of worship. A temple appears here because people need information about it, and its page states exactly what access it allows.

By the date shown beside each fact, which is the check date rather than the date the page was edited. A schedule checked recently can be planned around. An older one is worth a call to the temple first, and the page tells you which of the two you are reading before you rely on it.

No. This is an independent reference site. It carries what temples publish, credits them and links to them, and corrects itself when a temple says something has changed. It has no relationship with any temple, trust or tourism body.