The Iranshah at Udvada, a village in Gujarat, holds the fire that the Parsi tradition regards as its oldest and most sacred, installed there in 1742 after several relocations and held to descend from a fire consecrated shortly after the community's arrival in India, itself from Iran. Zoroastrians travel to it as pilgrims. What people describe when speaking about standing in front of a temple fire is not usually awe at the flame as such — the tradition is insistent that the fire is a direction of prayer rather than its object — but continuity: the same fire, tended the same way, that a great-grandparent faced. The tending itself reinforces this: a priest in a white padan mask that covers nose and mouth so that breath and saliva cannot reach the fire, feeding sandalwood with tongs at each of the five watches, ringing a bell. Non-Zoroastrians are not admitted, which the community maintains firmly and which means very few outsiders have seen it.