Nageshvara Jyotirlinga
— the lamp the temple keeps lit.
Not only on a wall.
“One of the twelve jyotirlingas in the old reckoning, set just inland from the Arabian Sea on the Saurashtra coast. A seated Shiva in concrete and copper rises behind the shikhara, visible from the road in. Pilgrims walk the prakara at dawn, before the heat, before the buses come up from Dwarka, while the sea stays close enough to hear.
Nageshvara Jyotirlinga, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Nageshvara Jyotirlinga sits about 17 kilometres north-east of Dwarka, on the Saurashtra peninsula of Gujarat, near the village traditionally identified with Daarukavanam. The Shiva Purana names it among the twelve self-manifest jyotirlingas, a circuit that runs from Somnath in the west to Rameshvaram in the south. The temple stands inland from the Gulf of Kutch, reached by a short road off the Dwarka-Okha highway. A 25-metre seated Shiva, completed in the 1990s, marks the site from a distance well before the shikhara comes into view.
The most visible element of the site is the seated Shiva, roughly 25 metres tall, carved in concrete and finished in copper tone. The sanctum itself is older and smaller: the lingam sits below ground level in a low-ceilinged garbhagriha that pilgrims enter in single file. The outer shikhara is whitewashed and modest. The colossus outside and the small dark sanctum inside is the architecture of the place, and the contrast holds longer than the photographs do.
The temple opens around 6 a.m. for the morning aarti and stays open until about 9 p.m., with a midday break in the early afternoon. Photography is allowed in the outer compound but not inside the sanctum, and men remove shirts before entering for darshan. Most visitors combine Nageshvara with the Dwarkadhish temple in Dwarka town and the Krishna sites on Bet Dwarka in a single day, the standard circuit from Dwarka roughly 17 kilometres to the south-west.