Ayodhya, India – As half one million folks converged on the gates of the brand new temple to the Hindu deity Ram, Brijesh Pathak regarded on.

It was the day after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had consecrated the shrine amid a nationwide frenzy that had turned the eye of a rustic of 1.4 billion folks to the temple city of Ayodhya within the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the place Hindu scriptures say Ram was born.

The devotees had turned as much as catch a glimpse of Ram’s idol put in on the grand construction constructed on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque demolished by a right-wing mob in 1992.

But as the gang swelled, Pathak, the 32-year-old supervisor of a guesthouse, stated, a stampede-like state of affairs was created exterior the temple premises. Buses and rickshaws have been ordered off the streets, police barricades have been put up and extra safety personnel have been rushed to the small city, incapable of dealing with such an enormous variety of guests.

“It was a flood of people. You could only see endless heads,” Pathak advised Al Jazeera.

Only a day in the past, the town was India’s most sought-after vacation spot after Modi, together with numerous Hindu saints, movie stars and enterprise leaders landed there to inaugurate the controversial temple.

But because the PM and the celebrities moved on, Ayodhya was left to cope with a brand new actuality: it’s a metropolis that’s now anticipated to obtain thousands and thousands of vacationers and pilgrims yearly, but is ill-prepared to deal with such volumes of tourists, native businesspeople and merchants stated.

Like the unfinished temple that was consecrated forward of nationwide elections – due between March and May – the town has been rushed into its new function.

On January 23, after Modi and different celebrities flew out, a number of pilgrims have been injured, and a few had fractures, as throngs of devotees broke police boundaries to enter the advanced. In response, the state’s Hindu nationalist chief minister returned to Ayodhya with prime officers to handle the disaster. In New Delhi, Modi barred his ministers from visiting the temple for some weeks.

“It would take at least till 2027 for the temple to be complete,” an engineer working contained in the temple advised Al Jazeera on situation of anonymity.

Outside, within the metropolis, an identical sense of unpreparedness prevails.

‘We can’t deal with half one million folks’

Amid freezing chilly at a roadside eatery, some employees carrying T-shirts stood behind clay ovens, flipping dough and juggling plates. It’s a joint beneficial by the locals for having comparatively higher meals” in Ayodhya.

As orders piled up, the employees misplaced their ease. Waiters started to show a deaf ear to streaming clients. A cup of tea might take endlessly to reach.

“Ayodhya is not equipped to host so many tourists,” Nand Kumar Gupta, president of an area merchants’ union, advised Al Jazeera. “We are a very small town and we cannot handle half a million people. Nobody has trained us to take and manage 50 orders at the same time.”

Before the Ram Mandir, because the temple is thought, was inaugurated, Ayodhya largely noticed solely vacationers for non secular festivals hosted throughout Hindu festivals. Many of the guests have been from close by villages.

“Our restaurants are conditioned to cater to the villagers’ needs and living standards, not for people who need air conditioners in their eateries,” stated Gupta, 52. “We just do not have a system in place to do this.”

The whole city within the east of Uttar Pradesh was given a multimillion-dollar facelift as Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which controls each the federal and state governments, projected Ayodhya because the Vatican of the Hindus.

But Ayodhya’s revamp for the Ram Mandir venture has additionally put native companies beneath appreciable stress, Gupta stated.

“Nearly 4,000 shops were partly demolished [during the facelift] and 1,600 shops were completely wiped off,” he stated. “The upcoming economic prosperity in Ayodhya is for the big corporates, not us.”

‘We will be pushed out of the city’

Indeed, the city, being developed as the primary Hindu pilgrimage in future, is already attracting large cash, with tasks price 8,500 million Indian rupees (about $10bn) sanctioned for the uplift.

Leading resort firms, together with Marriott, Radisson and Wyndham, have signed offers to construct star resorts. Advertisements – one that includes Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan – are calling on India’s wealthy to put money into properties and resorts on the banks of the Saryu River.

The city’s railway station has been revamped. A brand new airport has come up, although it was not outfitted sufficient to park almost a dozen chartered planes carrying dignitaries that landed in Ayodhya on January 22.

“The government has combined religious sentiments, politics and economics here and the local administration is just full of themselves to see this reality,” Gupta advised Al Jazeera. “Eventually, it looks like all of us will be pushed out of the city as they convert this city into a mega pilgrimage.”

But some smaller companies are nonetheless attempting to regulate to a brand new actuality. Guesthouse supervisor Pathak renovated his property not too long ago, including 11 extra rooms to his modest three-room enterprise. Mosquitoes buzz within the rooms, which have little air flow.

As Pathak stood exterior his guesthouse and regarded over the swelling crowd, he stated he was past excited. His guesthouse, alongside the primary road named Ram Path, is booked for the following three days, a primary for him. “And we are charging threefold prices,” he stated, bursting out in laughter.

Shivam Puri, a 36-year-old pilgrim, had travelled for 2 nights from India’s south along with his household to succeed in Ayodhya and have a glimpse of his deity. He was among the many crowd that broke by the temple’s boundaries.

As he rushed contained in the temple, Puri stated he felt “something that he had never felt before”.

But he is not going to be staying in Ayodhya for the evening. “I am leaving for Lucknow,” he advised Al Jazeera, referring to the state capital, about 136km (84 miles) away.

“Here, you cannot even find a decent dinner that is anything but spices in water.”