Martand, The Sun Temple of Kashmir, India.

The Martand Sun Temple was King Lalitaditya in the 8th Century, yet the foundation of the temple is said to have been built between 370- 500 AD, and its construction attributed to King Ranaditya and his Queen Amritaprabha. Located in the most glorious location with the mountains at your back, take a right off the road after Anantnag and before Pahalgam, and have a wonder at the ancient glories. Dedicated to Shiva, this beautiful and massive temple has a colonnaded courtyard, with the shrine in its centre, it used to have a surrounding colonnade of 84 columns – the multiple of the number of days in the week with the number of the zodiac signs (7 x 12), and water used to be bought in by canal from the Lidder River. Standing in a amongst the ruins in the mystical Lidder Valley, you can really feel the current of spirituality that has been present in the very soil, air, rock and water of the Kashmir Valley since humans first arrived and co-created ideas of God, faith and mysticism.