Of the twelve jyotirlingas of Shiva, only one faces south, and only one is worshipped as Mahakal, the lord of time itself. It stands at Ujjain, upon the banks of the Shipra, in a city that has been holy for as long as India has kept record of such things: the seat of Vikramaditya, the court in which Kalidasa is held to have written, and the meridian by which Hindu astronomers once measured the longitude of the subcontinent.
The temple is approached now as it deserves to be. Mahakal Lok, opened in 2022, carries the pilgrim more than nine hundred metres about the Rudrasagar lake upon a hundred and eight pillars, with some two hundred sculptures drawn from the Shiva Purana set along its length so that what was once a queue outside a shrine has become half an hour of procession, and a part of the pilgrimage itself. Darshan is possible throughout the day, and the crowds thin in the early afternoon.
Yet it is the hour before dawn that draws the devout from every corner of India. The Bhasma Aarti is performed at Mahakaleshwar and nowhere else, the linga bathed in curd, honey and sandalwood, then veiled in sacred ash while the city still sleeps around it. The ceremony begins at about four o'clock; admission is limited, registration is made in advance, and a traditional dress code is observed.
Ujjain holds a great deal besides. At Kal Bhairav, guardian of the city, liquor is offered and returned in part as prasad. Harsiddhi rises upon eleventh-century pillars between two lamp towers bearing a thousand and eight lamps apiece, lit through the nights of Navaratri. Sandipani Ashram, a little out along the river, is held to be the school in which Krishna and Sudama studied as boys. And at the Vedh Shala, raised by Sawai Jai Singh in 1725, thirteen instruments of masonry stand still and are used still to calculate the almanac.
At Ram Ghat, the most ancient bathing ghat upon the Shipra, the evening aarti brings the whole city down to the water. Every twelve years the same steps receive the Simhastha, one of the four Kumbh Melas and among the greatest gatherings of humanity anywhere on earth; the next is expected in 2028. On Mahashivratri, in February or March, the city fills again.
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