Shatrunjaya's hilltop holds more than eight hundred marble temples, and pilgrims are expected to reach and leave all of them within the same day.
A hilltop city of temples
More than eight hundred individually built marble temples and shrines cover the hilltop, constructed and added to by different patrons over many centuries rather than as a single planned complex, dedicated primarily to Rishabhanatha, known as Adinatha, the first Tirthankara in Jain tradition, whom the site's principal temple enshrines.
The climb and its rules
Reaching the temples requires a barefoot climb of roughly thirty-eight hundred steps, undertaken as an act of devotion consistent with Jain principles of physical discipline and non-attachment, and pilgrims commonly observe fasting or restricted eating before and during the ascent as part of the practice's spiritual seriousness.
Nobody stays overnight
As this entry's companion article notes, tradition and temple rules require that no one remain on the hill after nightfall, including temple staff, so the entire complex of hundreds of temples is deliberately left unattended each night, a practice tied to the belief that the mountain's sanctity should not be treated as ordinary inhabited ground even temporarily.