Vemulawāda

The Raja Rajeswara Shiva temple at Vemulawada in Rajanna Sircilla district, Telangana, 150 kilometres from Hyderabad — one of the most visited Shiva temples in Telangana, built under the Rashtrakuta and later Chalukya dynasties around 750-973 CE. The temple is unusual for the practice of Kode Mokku, in which pilgrims offer live bullocks as fulfilment of vows — the only major temple in India to retain this practice at scale, with over a thousand bullocks offered each year. The bullocks are then auctioned by the temple trust and the funds go to agricultural development. The temple's Kalyanamandapam and Bhogamandapam are 11th-century Chalukya; later Kakatiya and Vijayanagara additions. The Shivaratri mela draws over a million.