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.

Keshava Temple

I saw a lot of Hoysala Temples while in South India. This is the first one that my group visited. It was also my favorite. It's considered the best-preserved Hoysala temple. It's also small enough that it wasn't overwhelming and we could take in the plan of the temple all at once. (It's not evident from the pictures, but if you are standing there, you can tell that the temple is shaped like a many-pointed star). Just imagine a lot more of this, with some subtle variations in iconography that were significant to us as students, and you'll get an idea of what much of my trip consisted of.


The man in the entranceway is the shoe-minder. When going into certain temples at archaelogical sites, you have to remove your footwear. Then, you have to give some man a pittance to "mind" them. I think his purpose is purely ornamental, since it's unlikely that he's watching who has left which shoes on the rack.

Typical Hoyshala-style columns.


This repetition of the style of the building, called a "temple within a temple motif" is common in Hoyshala architecture.

As you approach the back of the temple, the design becomes simpler, focusing on the god image that is on the back wall. Usually, especially if the temple is still in worship, you can't take a picture of the god image.


One of lots of religious scenes on the outside of the temple. This one is Vishnu incarnated as narasinha (the man lion). The man who is credited with building this temple was a general under the rule of the Hoysala king Narasinha III, so this image appears a lot here in particular.



Some scenes of courtly life run along the base of the temple. You're supposed to walk around Hindu temples clockwise (a respectful practice known as pradakshina), so if you follow the images, you're essentially lead by the iconography to do the "right" thing when viewing the temple.

Note: This temple is in the small city of Somnathpur, technically, but I'm listing it under Mysore because I saw it while staying in Mysore.

Mysore Accommodations

While in Mysore, we stayed at a place called the Green Hotel. It's the former summer guesthouse of a Mysore maharaja that is transformed into an "ecologically friendly, non-profit hotel." What this means is that they save energy resources by not washing towels everyday, not providing TVs or air-conditioning, etc, and that, after paying off all the employees, they invest their net profit in charitable causes. Good for them, I suppose, but this extreme friendliness combined with the association with the Maharaja seem a little like a forced apology for British colonialism.

Also, the hotel has the disadvantage of attracting the sort of people who want to go to India to stay in an ecologically friendly hotel. They are the same sort of people, I think, who come here to do "spiritual" things and appreciate how the setting is somehow "more natural" despite the lack of traffic, pollution, and sanitation standards that Western cities generally have. As someone who tries to seriously study the place, these are not my favorite people. Still, their presence has the advantage that you can get good Continental meals here, including eggs, which I had greatly missed. The hotel also had the best coffee I've ever had, and the staff were very nice. I really enjoyed staying there on a personal level, even though I'm not a huge fan of how the hotel tries to reinforce tourist hopes for India.

Below is one of the flower necklaces that we were ritually garlanded with upon arriving at the hotel. It's sitting on a bowl of rosewater that's left by the entrance of the rooms for the guests to rinse their hands.







This is the building where we had classes in Mysore.