Traveling to the Amar Narayan Temple in Tansen

What Is There To Do In Tansen

Despite Tansen’s long and interesting history spanning back to the age of the great Magar Kingdom, the city has largely been left unknown in recent years. Due to the town’s remote location, perched on top of a cloud-shrouded hill, the highway connecting Butwal and Pokhara bypasses Tansen altogether.

Finally, the local government is doubling their efforts to bring Tansen out of the shadows and reinvent this once great kingdom into an ideal resting point for tourists traveling between Pokhara and Butwal.

Hotels and restaurants are being opened, anxiously awaiting the hopeful new tide of travelers who will be making the treck up to Tansen. Other than just the town’s location, Tansen needs something to slap onto a poster to lure tourists to this forgotten town.

The so-called “poster child” of Tansen should be the unique Amar Narayan Temple.

If you want to read more on what to do in Tansen click here!

Straight Out Of  Kathmandu

For those who have spent some time in the Kathmandu Valley, you will be no stranger to the elaborate pagoda style temples of the Newar people. After some time exploring other districts around Nepal, you may find that many shrines are quite bland, being nothing more than some brightly colored slabs of concrete.

Tansen’s Amar Narayan Temple will seem like a breath of fresh air as you gawk at the pure aesthetic beauty of the pagoda. Other than its location so far outside from the Kathmandu Valley, this temple is unique in the fact that it seems to be much closer to nature when compared to the pagodas lost in a sea of highrises in Kathmandu.

Looking to see the temples of Bhaktapur? Read more on them here!

Erotic Pagodas

The temple complex is made up of two pagodas, one small moss-covered tower at the entrance and the three-story structure at the top of the hill. The first of these temples is a common area for locals to bathe themselves and do laundry in the sacred waters of the grounds.

The larger, and more breathtaking, of the two pagodas, is dedicated to Lord Narayana (one of the incarnations of Lord Vishnu). Although the temple grounds may be small, the elaborate craftsmanship which was put into this pagoda is more than enough to have tourists staring upwards with their nose in the air.

For many tourists, the erotic carvings are what strikes their curiosity and brings them giggling all the way up to the temple steps.

There are many reasons behind the sexual imagery incorporated into such religiously important places. One of the reasons is that the carvings represent the Hindu concept of contentment in the physical world. Another meaning is that through the coupling between male and female one can obtain the ultimate height of yoga, or unification. The last and final reason is that in times of war and famine, such imagery was used to encourage people to increase the population of the country.

You can find more breathtaking pagodas off the beaten path in Nepal in Panauti!

The Aarti Puja

Simply visiting a temple is not enough to truly experience how sacred the grounds truly are. Just like any place, at the end of the day, the pagoda is just a big building, it is the people that make the temple come alive. At Tansen’s Amar Narayan Temple, an aarti puja is held twice a day at 5:00 in the morning and 7:00 in the evening.

Aarti pujas are typically the offering of fire to a Hindu god or goddesses by circulating the flame in front of the deity’s visage. This form of worship can be anything from extremely extravagant such as the aarti puja in Varanasi or simply held in ones own home.

The aarti puja at Amar Narayan Temple is nowhere near as massive as the worship in Varanasi but does offer an opportunity to see the local community come together and pray just as they have for centuries.

This pagoda could easily become the emblem for Tansen. While the center of the city has been the durbar square for generations, the true soul of Tansen can be found in Amar Narayan Temple. Amongst the quiet steps of the pagoda, you will feel more close to the people of Nepal than anywhere else in Tansen.

Looking to see another aarti puja in Nepal? Check out the one in Panauti here!