Looking at the Taal Barahi Temple in Pokhara. Photo by Priti Thapa

Taal Barahi Temple is a two-story pagoda-style temple that has white stone outer walls and a thatched roof topped with gold gilded Gajur. The temple centers the colossal Fewa Lake in Pokhara and is dedicated to Goddess Bhagawati in a boar form. Barahi means a female boar and Bhagawati is a word of Sanskrit origin and is an honorific title for female deities in Hinduism She is the Protector of Gods, also known as Ajima otherwise. She has the head of a boar and the body of a Human and holds a cup and a fish in either hand. Bhagwati takes Barahi form to destroy all evil and reinstate power. There is no day when Taal Barahi doesn't see visitors but, on special occasions like Dashain the island is crowded with devotees and she is honoured with animal sacrifices. According to the legend, Fewa Lake covers the area of the once-prosperous valley and the valley was called Fewa. Bhagwati one day wandered the streets of Fewa Town to check how the inhabitants treated her in a beggar form. To her dismay, all the inhabitants scorned her. There was only one sympathetic couple who had recently migrated from Kathmandu. The family welcomed her into their house and gave her warm food, she then warned them of an impending flood as a thank-you note. The couple paying heed to what the beggar had to say fled with the family to higher ground. A torrent roared down shortly from the mountains and submerged the Fewa town converting it into a lake. The lone survivors of the flood and their descendants settled beside the new lake and made the island shrine of Taal Barahi. Since the Barahi temple lies on an island on Fewa Lake, the Barahi temple can only be accessed by boats.