Manakamana Temple

Manakamana Temple sits on a forested ridge in Gorkha District, overlooking the Trishuli and Marsyangdi river valleys, and is one of Nepal’s most visited Shakti pilgrimage sites outside the Kathmandu Valley. It is dedicated to Manakamana, a wish-fulfilling form of the goddess Bhagwati (identified with Durga/Mahalakshmi), whose name literally means “heart’s wish.” Tradition holds that a queen of the Gorkha royal house was recognized in life as an incarnation of the goddess, and that after her death a farmer discovered blood and milk flowing from a stone split at this spot; the ascetic Lakhan Thapa Magar is credited with performing the rites that calmed the phenomenon and establishing worship here, with his Magar descendants serving as hereditary priests to this day. The present two-storied pagoda temple is traditionally dated to 1678, in the era of Gorkha’s Shah rulers, though sources differ on exactly which king’s queen the goddess is identified with.

For most of its history Manakamana was reached only by a strenuous hike of several hours from the valley floor, which did not stop it from becoming one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in central Nepal, particularly during Dashain. That changed in 1998 with the opening of a cable car from Kurintar on the Kathmandu-Pokhara highway, cutting the journey to about ten minutes and turning the temple into one of the country’s most accessible major shrines as well as a tourist draw in its own right. The temple complex sustained damage in Nepal’s April 2015 earthquake and was substantially rebuilt between 2015 and 2018 under government archaeological supervision, and it remains an active site of daily worship, animal sacrifice offerings by tradition, and heavy pilgrim traffic during Dashain’s Durga Ashtami.