Sukkur – Kalkaan Devi Temple

Mystic with a scary touch. Home of spiraling tunnels and smoke. Always smelling of Agarbatis. Revered and visited by hundreds of Hindus everyday. Kalkaan Devi Temple is a different kind of shrine. One not on the surface but inside a mountain. More suited to the rugged landscape of Aror. Kalkaan Devi chose this cave possibly to save herself from the persecution of Muslim rulers of the time.

Kalkaan Devi Mandir can be accessed via Rohri by pass. From Muhammad bin Qasim Public School in Aror, you need to turn left and drive for two or three km before you find the road ending at the temple. Even on a working day you will find six seven families praying and resting in the temple. Many rooms have been built around the original temple in the cave. Some for praying, others for resting and taking care of visitors which flock in thousands during time period of Hindu festivals. Take your shoes off and enter the temple from the right. Watch for pointed stones in the roof. They can hurt you real bad. Cave height is a little less than 5.6 feet so you have to be careful. Before the praying place for the priest is a small compartment which marks the start of the first tunnel in the cave. The legend says that the first tunnel connects Kalkaan Devi Temple to the one in Hinglaj. The priest sits at a stone platform. There is an idol of fearful Kalkaan Devi who has a dagger in one and a head in his other hand. Past the priest you can see a second tunnel. The legends says that it leads to some temple in Calcutta. Move ahead and you will enter Samdhi. Have a cup of tea with the caretaker. Be respectful and don’t question assumptions. Leave if you can’t help it.

Take the stairs outside the temple to reach the top of the mountain. From there you can see countless hilltops all of the same height and build. Indus river flowed here somewhere. till 962 AD when an earthquake changed its track. It took the life with itself. Aror is a dead city with few surviving landscape and a small settlement surviving on an irrigation canal. Visiting it might not help you financially. Ever. But the vast emptiness will help you ignite idle curiosity within yourself. And this idle curiosity has a promise.