Uttar Pradesh Quiz: Religious Places and Tourism (Kashi, Ayodhya, Prayagraj, Mathura)

After attaining enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, the Buddha walked to the deer park at Sarnath, near Varanasi, and preached to the five companions who had earlier left him.

At Prayagraj the Yamuna joins the Ganga, and tradition holds that the Saraswati flows there unseen, so the meeting point is called the Triveni Sangam, the braid of three streams.

The Kashi Vishwanath temple at Varanasi is the jyotirlinga of Uttar Pradesh. It stands in the old city close to the Ganga, a short walk from the Dashashwamedh ghat where the evening Ganga Aarti is held.

Mathura, on the right bank of the Yamuna, is revered as the place where Krishna was born in the prison of Kansa, and the Krishna Janmabhoomi complex marks the spot.

Akbar built the fort at the confluence in 1583 and renamed the town Illahabas, from which the name Allahabad came; the city was renamed Prayagraj in 2018.

The Prayag Prashasti, also called the Allahabad pillar inscription, was composed in Sanskrit by Harisena, a minister and court poet of Samudragupta.

Barsana, remembered as Radha's village, holds the best known Lathmar Holi, in which the women of Barsana playfully beat back the men who come from Nandgaon with long sticks, and the play is repeated the next day at Nandgaon.

Asaf-ud-Daula of Awadh had the Bara Imambara built at Lucknow in 1784 as a famine relief work, so that labourers could earn wages through a year of scarcity.

Kushinagar, in the east of the state near Gorakhpur, was the capital of the Malla republic, and the Buddha died there under sal trees; the event is called mahaparinirvana.

Uttar Pradesh has three World Heritage Sites and all three are in Agra district: the Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan in white marble for Mumtaz Mahal; the Agra Fort, raised by Akbar in red sandstone on the Yamuna; and Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar's planned capital with the Buland Darwaza, the…