'Hindi Lane'

Lonely Planet review

If you venture behind the Grand Mosque in Bur Dubai, you'll find evidence of two places of worship behind very modest exteriors - rows of shoes in shelves at the bottom of a couple of sets of stairs. One staircase leads to the Shri Nathje Jayate Temple, also known as the Krishna Mandir ( mandir is Hindi for temple). Shri Nathji is the main deity of Pushtimarg, a Hindu devotional sect, with its main temple near Udaipur in Rajasthan, India.

The other house of worship is identified by a discreet sign, Sikh Gurudaba, which is interesting, because a Sikh place of worship is called a gurdwara . A guru is a teacher-guide, and a dabar is a cheap lunch stop, but we're not sure if there's a connection. Of most interest to travellers is the small alley that expats refer to as 'Hindi Lane'. Here vendors sell Hindu religious paraphernalia and offerings to take to the temples: baskets of fruit, garlands of flowers, gold-embossed holy images, sacred ash, sandalwood paste and packets of bindis, the little pendants Hindu women stick to their foreheads.