Ramchaura Mandir

The Ramchaura Mandir stands at Rambhadra in Hajipur, on the north bank of the Ganga opposite Patna. Its central object of worship is a set of footprints: local tradition holds that Rama passed this way on the road to Janakpur in Mithila, where he would win Sita as his bride, and left his footprints here.

The name pairs Rama with chaura, the Bhojpuri word for orchid, and the shrine has been tended for centuries by the Bari Sangat, a monastic math. Pilgrims gather above all for Rama Navami, the birthday of Rama, when a fair is held.

In 1337 Hajipur was a ferry village of the Delhi Sultanate's Tirhut; it was fortified and renamed by Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah of Bengal in the mid-fourteenth century, and the armies of Akbar twice stormed it, in 1572 and 1574, while subduing the Karrani rulers of Bengal.