Chausath Yogini Temple

The Chausath Yogini Temple stands apart from the main western group, a short walk away across open ground. It is a simple structure: a rectangular granite enclosure with 81 small shrines around its inner perimeter, most now empty, with a central shrine in the middle. The whole thing lacks the soaring towers and elaborate sculpture of the famous temples, yet there is something genuinely eerie about the place — the oldest structure in Khajuraho, where the worship of fierce tantric goddesses predated the elaborate Chandela aesthetic.

Only a few of the original yogini images survive; most shrines now stand empty. The setting outside the fenced UNESCO enclosure means you can visit without paying the main entrance fee and often without another person in sight.

The Brahma Temple, another isolated outlier near a small tank, is worth a look on the same walk.

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A story
The Chausath Yogini Temple is the oldest surviving temple at Khajuraho, built in granite rather than sandstone around the late 9th century — predating the main UNESCO complex by several decades. Chausath means "sixty-four," referring to the yoginis (female tantric deities) who were worshipped here. Unlike most Indian temples, it is an open courtyard arrangement without a roof, oriented toward the southwest — thought to be connected to tantric practices in which conventional religious geography was deliberately inverted.