Aurangabad Scenery

Hotel in Ellora

Assorted South India Photos

Mountains and Megaliths

We climbed up a mountain, without a real trail.



There was an awesome view from the top. Also, there were many megaliths at the top. They're big stones that someone quarried from miles away, and dragged up a mountain to make huts out of. Noone knows why this was done, or who exactly did it. Some local legends say that the huts were houses of the Pandavas (the heroes of the Mahabharata), although they would have been built much later than the epic was set. It's pretty common, as you may have noticed from these posts, to attribute important structures to epic figures.



This is a place known as "Sita's Bath." It's said to be the place that Sita, the heroine of the Ramayana and the Hindu model of the ideal wife, dropped her jewelry. All of the little bundles attached to the tree are offerings to Sita from women praying for fertility.



At the top of the mountain, there was also a pond with natural lotuses! Lotuses are the national flower of India. They also symbolize the path to enlightenment, in Buddhism especially, because they grow in murky, inhospitable water before breaking through to the surface and blossoming. These flowers were one of the things that I most wanted to see in India, and I had almost resigned myself to not seeing any in their natural habitat at this point in the trip.

A Very Holy Last Day in Mysore

That morning, I woke up at 4:30 am to go hiking. It was necessary to get up at this hour so that seven other people and I could go to a nearby hill and then hike up it in time to see the sun rise at 6:00 over a temple at the top of the hill that is a popular pilgrimage spot. The actual climb was not exactly “hiking,” but instead walking up 1000 steps. Literally 1000 steps. It ended up being cloudy, so we didn't actually get a view of the sunrise, but we did get to watch it gradually become light in the mist at the top of the temple. It was fun to be at the level of the clouds. Also, after it became light, a busload of pilgrims dressed in black lungis drove up the mountain and arrived at the temple for a morning service. It seemed funny that we all had climbed the hill when they hadn't.

Since this was our last day in the hotel at Mysore, when we left the hotel at 8 am, the staff blessed us for our journey. This involved placing bindis on our foreheads and giving us the traditional gifts of a betel leaf, an areca nut, a banana, and a coconut. These things, incidentally, are what you also give the gods at a temple here.

Then, we climbed up more stairs to get to a famous outcrop at the most popular Jain pilgrimage site in India. This outcrop was only 380 steps to the top, although the mountainside was so steep that it hardly felt like walking on steps at all. This wasn't so bad on the way up. However, coming down the mountain felt like very slowly falling and was quite unpleasant.

While at the site of worship near the feet of the statue, we were blessed again with all the other tourists/pilgrims. Then, after making a small monetary donation, we were taken up on a scaffold that brought us up to about waist-hight in relation to the statue. This gave us the opportunity to photograph the surrounding landscape, which is very striking because there is a large mixture of geographical climates (arid, wet, and irrigated arid) all in the same region, and it looks impossible that they could all go together. Many people also took the photographic opportunity to get a picture of themselves at level with the statue's butt, which it turns out is quite, ah, anatomically accurate.

You've probably seen a picture of this place before; it's a giant naked man carved on top of a mountain. The naked man is the Mahavira, the founder and central figure of Jainism. Jainism is a lot like Buddhism in that it advocates nonviolence, renounces the idea of caste, and focuses on spiritual liberation, or moksha. The two religions also were founded at about the same period in time, and the iconographic portrayals of the Buddha and the Mahavira look quite a bit alike. You can tell the Mahavira from the Buddha, however, because he is depicted with broader shoulders and exposed genitalia, while the Buddha is usually covered up. The latter characteristic is included in the iconography because, ideally, in the Jain tradition, as you become enlightened toward the end of your life, you give up everything, including your clothes. Also, after doing this, you're supposed to renounce the world's pleasures so fully that you allow yourself to starve to death. Needless to say, not everyone who follows the religion gets to this pinnacle of holiness.

Mysore Nature Park

Funny Signs, Part 2

Mysore Market

These are some assorted images from the main market in Mysore. On the day I visited here, my camera had died, as the charger had stopped working and I hadn't had time to get a new one yet. This turned out to actually be to my advantage, because it gave me an excuse to ask for photos from my friend Kelvin, who went with me. Kelvin is a much better photographer than I am, has a much higher quality camera, and, unlike me, enjoys taking pictures. As a result, you can see that these photos are notably better than the ones I take, and I was able to just wander around without feeling compelled to document anything.

The market was mostly just where people buy vegetables and puja materials, but I thought it was great. People were extremely nice here, even though they could tell we were just tourists who didn't need any of the things they were selling. It was the first time I've gone to a market (or anywhere there's a store in India, I think) where noone tried to pressure me to buy something if I looked at it.

The kid who is in the first pictures actually bought me and Kelvin tea and invited us into his family's vegetable stall to ask us about other countries. Normally he would have been in school, but he was off for Eid vacation. He was twelve years old and knew English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, and some Telugu. (This isn't uncommon in India, but I'm impressed every time I hear it.) He told us that his favorite food is Maggi noodles, the Indian version of Ramen noodles, and a staple of impoverished peoples' diets in many areas as well as a kid favorite like Mac and Cheese is here. He wanted to hear us talk about sports, and unfortunately we were both at a loss. He was very disappointed to hear that noone in America follows cricket, the most popular sport in India. He also really enjoyed having his picture taken, which is what started the interaction.












This market is also interesting for historical reasons because it is virtually unchanged in form from how it would have been hundreds of years ago. Markets like these were located at the front of temple complexes like the one I posted pictures of previously so that people could buy their puja goods and daily groceries. Nowdays, the vacated mandapas where people would have sold puja goods originally have been reappropriated by people selling tourist souveniers in some areas.