Rajasthan, India

The Gorwad Panch Tirth

Five Svetambara temples in the Godwad tract of Pali district — Ranakpur, Muchhal Mahavir, Narlai, Nadol and Varkana — traditionally travelled together as one panch tirth.

"Panch tirth" — five shrines — is a naming pattern that recurs across Svetambara pilgrimage in western India: a traditionally fixed set of five sites, close enough to travel together, that the tradition names and counts as a single circuit rather than five separate destinations that happen to share a district. The Gorwad Panch Tirth is the Pali district instance of it, named for the Godwad tract of southern Marwar the five sites sit within.

Ranakpur, the best known of the five and already a major destination in its own right, anchors the route; the other four are individually smaller but each carries its own distinct claim — Muchhal Mahavir’s moustache legend, Narlai’s carved elephants and hilltop cave, Nadol’s dated eleventh-century inscriptions, Varkana’s fifty-two subsidiary shrines. None would draw a dedicated multi-day trip alone the way Ranakpur does; travelled as the five-site panch tirth, together they are a genuine two-to-three day circuit rather than a single stop with four afterthoughts.

The route

1. 1
   Ranakpur Jain Temple Pali district, Rajasthan

   The circuit’s major site and usual starting point — most pilgrims already know Ranakpur, and the other four are read against its scale.

2. 2
   Muchhal Mahavir Temple Ghanerao, Pali district, Rajasthan

   A short distance from Ranakpur on the road toward Kumbhalgarh — the panch tirth’s most distinctive single story, the moustached Mahavira image found nowhere else.

3. 3
   Adinath Temple, Narlai Narlai, Pali district, Rajasthan

   A village stop built around its carved elephants and hill shrine, and, unusually for this circuit, a site shared with a separate Hindu pilgrimage to the same hill.

4. 4
   Padmaprabhu Temple, Nadol Nadol, Pali district, Rajasthan

   The old Chahamana capital, and the circuit’s deepest documented history — inscriptions dated centuries before any of the other four can be dated with the same confidence.

5. 5
   Varkana Parshvanath Temple Pali district, Rajasthan

   The circuit’s natural close: a temple that itself names the Gorwad Panch Tirth in its own account, tying the route back to the place that describes it.

Verified this session (2026) against tour operator and pilgrimage-guide descriptions of the Gorwad/Godwad Panch Tirth, which consistently name these five sites as the set; Varkana’s own temple description independently names the same circuit and lists the same four companions.