The parikrama around Govardhan runs about twenty one kilometres and is done barefoot. It passes ponds, shrines and villages attached to episodes of Krishna's childhood, and most pilgrims complete it in a day. A smaller number perform it by dandavat pranam, prostrating full length, marking the ground at the fingertips, standing, walking to the mark and lying down again, which turns the circuit into a matter of weeks.
Diana Eck's work on Indian sacred geography sets Govardhan inside the wider Braj pilgrimage, in which a whole district is treated as one landscape corresponding to the events of Krishna's life, so that walking round the hill is a movement inside a larger circuit taking in Vrindavan, Mathura, Barsana and Gokul. The circumambulation of a natural feature is a very old and very widespread Indian form, applied to hills, rivers, groves and whole regions, and it does not require a building. That is worth stating plainly, because a reference work organised around temples can leave the impression that Hindu practice is temple centred. At Govardhan the object of worship is the hill itself, the rite is a walk, and the temples along the route are incidents on the way rather than the destination.