Near the Bay of Bengal in the Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh stands the Kurmanathaswamy temple of Srikurmam — revered as the only temple in the world dedicated to Kurma, the tortoise, the second of the ten avatars of Lord Vishnu, in which the Lord upheld Mount Mandara upon his back during the churning of the cosmic ocean. The self-manifested (swayambhu) image is shaped like the shell of a tortoise, kept coated in fragrant sandalwood paste.
Once a Shiva temple, it was, tradition holds, converted to the worship of Vishnu by the great teacher Ramanuja in the eleventh century with the support of the Eastern Ganga king Anantavarman Chodaganga. Built in a fusion of Kalinga and Dravidian styles and rich with inscriptions, and famed for a legendary tunnel said to reach Kashi, Srikurmam is a rare and deeply sacred abode of the Kurma avatar.
