KULU-MANALI

The area is also prone to earth quakes, land-slides and occasionally torrential rains due to cloud burst. Any heavy stone and wood temple could be a danger. Naturally the people have taken to that temple type which is more familiar to them and that is the residential type of a building with necessary changes to suit the demands of a temple. We seldom get a steady daily flow of very large congregation of pilgrims in the temples of Himachal Pradesh as we get in the South or Orissa.

So the mandapa or the space required for the congregation need not be very spacious. While sticking to the wooden residential houses with changes for the temples the Himachalis have followed the example in West Bengal. In that area the common type of temples are the residential hut with one, two or four curved thatched or semi-mortared roofs known as ek-chala (one roofed),do-chala (two- roofed),  or char-chalas (four-roofed).

There is another factor, which has strongly influenced the temples in Himachal Pradesh. Unlike the other States or areas we have in Himachal Pradesh the frequent devata processions. It is very usual on various occasions to take out the deities of one, two or more temples together in procession accompanied by music and dance on a fixed route and through villages and the villagers do pujas to them.

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