Nepal Pilgrimage

The are several temples in Nepal that are known as Shakti Peeths. But wat is a Shakti Peeth and where does it come from ?

As with most Hindi legends there are several stories that slighty differ from each other. The main story is that in the Satya Yuga, Sati / Shakti / Dakshayani who was a daughter of Daksha a Prajapati (meaning one of the sons of Brahma) married with Shiva against her fathers will. 

During a yagja (a religious ceremony) organised by Daksha the whole family (all of his 330 million daughters) with all the gods were invited except Shakti and Shiva. Shakti who was very angry about this decided to show up anyway. During the ceremony Daksha talks bad about Shiva and Shakti gets so upset that she throws herself into the fire. (Performing Sati a ritual where a queen joins her dead husband alife on the funeral pile).
This outrages Shiva so much that he goes to the cermony, kills Daksha and takes Shakti deads body with him. Full with grief Shiva carries Shakti's body with him all over the world. Until Vishnu can't bear it anymore. Vishnu's takes his discus and cuts Shakti's body into 51 pieces after which her different body parts fall at several places on the world. Each place where a part of Shakti fell is called a shakti peeth.

Locations of Shakti Peeths

There are different stories about the where these exact shakti peeths are. In local Nepali myths there are already at least 3 shaktipeeths in the Kathmandu Valley.  They are at the confluence of the Bagmati and Vishnumati rivers in Kathmandu, at the Guheswari temple near Pashupatinath and near the Chandeshvari temple in Banepa. 

Besides Nepal you can find shakti peeths in Pakistan, Tibet, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. This website has a list of 51 Shakti Peeths including which part of Shakti's body fell there.

Sources:

Shakti Peetas Brimming with Devotees - Ekantipur