Baneshwar and the powerful deity of Lord Shiva

By Debolina Sarkar

Baneshwar is famous for Lord Shiva - the powerful and fascinating deity of the Hindu. It is situated at a distance of about 10 km to the North of Cooch Behar city. A 30 minutes drive from Cooch Behar town will bring you to the Baneshwar Shiva temple. This temple has a 'Shivalinga' which is 10 feet below the plinth level. The place is very pleasant and calm . A very famous temple in North Bengal and people from all around come to visit the divine Lord. Lot of devotees keep their faith on this Shivalingo.

Baneshwar Temple

This is believed to be very powerful Shivalinga. I wanted to share one real story about the Shivalingo .I have a friend who had lots of moles on her palm. She took lots of medicines for the moles to be vanished, but could not get relief from that non curable skin disease. One day she went to Baneshwar temple and offered some seeds to Shiva. To her surprise she got rid of her skin problem within a month or so. Not sure how it happened but surprised with that magical incident and the power of Lord . If you visit that place , you feel the presence of Lord Shiva. There is a big pond within the temple campus having a large number of tortoises. Some of the tortoises are very old and big in size. If you call these tortoises by naming them "Mohan", you can see many tortoises will be coming out from the ponds. You can touch and feed them .Their favourite food is “Murir Laddu”.

"Mohan"-As people call them here

The best time to visit Baneshwar between February and march because “Shiv Chaturdashi” will be held in that period. During Shiva Chaturdashi a big fair is being held here for a week, though you can visit the temple anytime of the year. And don’t miss the famous and delicious sweet curd("Made of kheer") while you are in Baneshwar.

The pond inside Baneshwar Shiva Temple