Katarmal

The sun temple at Katarmal, a village in the Kumaon hills above Almora, is one of the rare Surya shrines built in the medieval Himalayas. It was raised in the ninth century by Katarmalla, a king of the Katyuri dynasty, whose masons bonded the stones with a mixture of lime and lentil paste.

Around the main sanctuary of the sun god, worshipped here as Burhadita or Vraddhaditya, stand forty-four smaller temples, with further shrines to Shiva and Parvati and to Lakshmi-Narayana. Its walls and carved wooden doors and panels carry the sculpture of the Katyuri school, blending north Indian plains traditions with local Himalayan forms.

After the Katyuri collapse the region was reunited by the Chand dynasty, who moved their capital to Almora in 1563. In 1791 Kumaon was absorbed by the expanding Kingdom of Nepal.