Bhalei Mata Temple, Himachal Pradesh
Raja Pratap Singh built the Bhalei Mata Temple in Bhalei of Chamba city. Raja Pratap Singh is known in the history to be a religious king and has been attributed construction of many nearby religious buildings. The legend has it that the deity appeared in his dream and asked him to seek her image lying in a place called Bhran which is a few kilometers from the current temple location. Raja Pratap Singh and his officials intended to take the image to Chamba to build its temple. During their return journey, they stopped at Bhalei to take a break but were unable to life the image from the ground to take it to Chamba. Raja Pratap Singh took it as deity’s will to stay at Bhalei and built the temple at the same place where the image was placed. The deity is in front of an image of black stone which is around 2 ft high.
It was Raja Sri Singh who renovated the temple. The statue of the goddess Bhadra was even stolen in the year 1973 but was successfully recovered near Chohra. It is said that the statue is perspiring since the incident. There has been a lot of effort made by the Himachal Pradesh government to maintain the Bhalei Mata Temple and its renovation work has also been completed recently to ensure that tourists and the followers find it in a good shape when they visit the temple. A Havan ceremony is performed during the Hindu months of Ashwin and Chaitra (during the festival of Navaratri).
Timings
Bhalei Mata Temple open at 05:30 AM to 08:00 PM