File:0052423 Vandev temple, Dwarahat Uttarakhand 097.jpg

English: The Bandeo temple, also called the Vandev temple, is a 9th to 10th century Hindu temple near the banks of river Khiru Ganga in Dwarahat, Almora district. The temple has a square plan in a pidha deval style with a pyramidal phamsana shikhara. The temple had been damaged in an earthquake and some stones were out of alignment. The stones have been reset, the structure restored for safety and preservation. The temple sanctum is presently empty, the surviving artwork outside includes a non-circular Gavaksha-style motif with three faces peering out. It is likely that the Bandeo temple had a mandapa and other artwork, but these are lost before the 19th-century.

Dwarahat is a historic site in Uttarakhand that served as a hub for pilgrims going to Panch Kedars, Panch Badris, Panch Prayags and other Hindu pilgrimage routes. The town has many groups of Hindu temples built and restored between the 8th and the 16th century. These temples are attributed to various Hindu kings and queens from different dynasties, particularly those from the Katyuri dynasty. Totaling about 55 Hindu temples, they are notable as central Himalayan temples with architecture from different parts of India. For example, the Gujjar Deva group of Dwarahat shows the Maru-Gurjara architecture found in and near Gujarat – another testament to the flow of ideas across long distances in medieval India. The Dwarahat temples were reduced to ruins by Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughals. Dwarahat was again subject to pillage and desecration by Hafiz Khan and Bakshi Khan in mid 18th-century. Some were restored after the 15th century, and more recently in the 21st century by regional Hindu community and the ASI.

For scholarly sources on Dwarahat temples, see (1) Nachiket Chanchani (2019), Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains: Architecture, Religion, and Nature in the Central Himalayas, University of Washington Press (2) Omacanda Handa and Madhu Jain (2009), Art and Architecture of Uttaranchal, Pentagon Press (3) Nachiket Chanchani (2014), From Asoda to Almora, The Roads Less Taken: Māru-Gurjara Architecture in the Central Himalayas, Arts Asiatiques, Tome 69, pp. 3-16