Current Time in Mathura, India

Mathura is a city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, standing on the right bank of the Yamuna River about 150 kilometres south of Delhi and only fifty kilometres north-west of Agra. It lies at the heart of the Braj region, a stretch of plain and low woodland that has been sacred to Hindus for more than two thousand years, and its skyline is defined by temple spires and by the long flights of steps that lead down to the water.

The city has a population of around four hundred thousand, while the wider district counts well over two million. Its international importance is religious rather than economic. Mathura is revered as the birthplace of Krishna, one of the most widely worshipped deities in Hinduism, and millions of pilgrims arrive each year from across India and from Hindu communities abroad. Alongside this, the Mathura Refinery, one of the largest in northern India, gives the local economy a solid industrial anchor.

History here is unusually deep. Mathura was already a flourishing town in the age of the Buddha, later became a southern capital of the Kushan Empire under Kanishka, and gave its name to a celebrated school of sculpture that shaped the way the Buddha and the Jain saviours were depicted across Asia. Greek, Scythian and Kushan rulers all left traces here. The city was sacked several times in the medieval period, so much of what stands today belongs to later rebuilding.

The most visited site is the Krishna Janmabhoomi complex, raised around the traditional birthplace of the god. Close by stands the Dwarkadhish Temple, a nineteenth-century building famous for its painted interior and its festival processions, while Vishram Ghat is the focus of riverside worship, where evening lamp ceremonies send hundreds of small flames drifting down the Yamuna. The Government Museum holds one of the finest collections of ancient Indian sculpture anywhere, including the mottled red sandstone figures for which the city is known.

Cultural life is inseparable from the religious calendar. Janmashtami, marking the birth of Krishna, fills the streets in late summer, and the Holi celebrations of Mathura and neighbouring Vrindavan and Barsana are among the most exuberant in the world, drawing photographers and travellers as well as devotees. Devotional singing, the dance dramas known as raslila and the local milk sweet called peda all form part of the experience.

Mathura is well connected. It is a major junction on the railway between Delhi and Mumbai, with fast trains stopping throughout the day, and the Yamuna Expressway places it within a few hours of the capital by road. Education is provided by colleges affiliated to regional universities, along with respected institutes of veterinary science and management and a long tradition of Sanskrit learning kept alive in the temple schools.

Mathura matters because it keeps a living religious tradition at the centre of ordinary daily life. For visitors it offers ancient art, riverside ritual and one of the great festivals of the world within a single compact city.