Salasar Balaji
— — the Hanuman with a beard.
Not only on a wall.
“A small town on the edge of the Thar, in northern Rajasthan, with a temple at its centre. Salasar Balaji is one of the most visited Hanuman shrines in India, and the only one whose deity bears a moustache and beard. Pilgrims arrive on foot from Sujangarh, on motorbikes from Bikaner, in chartered buses from Delhi. The temple courtyard never fully empties.
Salasar Balaji, 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.
A town in Churu district of Rajasthan, in the Shekhawati region on the southern edge of the Thar Desert. Population in the town proper is roughly twenty thousand, swelling many times that during the two annual fairs. Salasar sits about sixty kilometres north of Sikar and one hundred eighty kilometres west of Jaipur, on the road from Jaipur to Bikaner. The town's economy is built almost entirely around the temple of Hanuman, which draws several million pilgrims a year, the heaviest crowds gathering for the Chaitra and Ashwin Purnima fairs.
The Salasar Balaji temple was established in 1754 by Mohandas Maharaj, a Brahmin devotee of Hanuman who lived in the village. The sanctum holds a self-manifested idol — a stone carved with the bearded and moustached face of Hanuman, a form found in no other major Hanuman shrine in India. The inner walls and ceiling were later overlaid in gold and silver leaf by devotees and continue to be added to. The complex now spans several acres around the original sanctum and is administered by the Salasar Balaji Trust on behalf of the priestly lineage.
The two Salasar Mela fairs, held on Chaitra Purnima in March or April and on Ashwin Purnima in September or October, each draw an estimated one to two million pilgrims to the town across a few days. The spring fair commemorates the 1754 establishment of the shrine. Many devotees walk the final twenty-five kilometres barefoot from Sujangarh, the nearest railway town. Coconuts, prasad packets, and red-orange chunari cloth fill every stall along the approach road for the duration of the fair, and the highway south slows for kilometres.