Kajuraho – Day 2
The temples are magnificent! We spend about 3 hours wandering around the complex with an
audio guide (a bit rickety but it works).
The touts in this town are very aggressive and annoying – we have to get
really loud and aggressive to get them to go away! Not fun. Anyway, back to the temples – the carvings are every bit as
sensual and graphic as advertised.
Remarkably, they have remained pretty much intact for centuries
(discovered - surprise surprise - by a Brit!) and are held in place by nothing more
than gravity. Lots of photos . . .
The original complex had more than 85 temples; there are 25 left. All are made of sandstone. The gardens are beautiful and perfectly kept.
Several temples have the world-famous sculptural insets. A few of the more gymnastic ones.
And what may be our favorite - the laughing elephant!
Lunch at the Café recommended in LP (terrific pizza from a wood fired
oven – big Italian influence in this town, go figure) and then head back to the
Palace to meet Deepu and Nandu.
Bone
jarring tuk tuk ride to the more remote Eastern temples and get to tour one
being ‘restored’ – imagine being able to traipse all over a site like that
anywhere else in the world!
The local restoration guy.
Finally the Jain temple complex – much like the Western temples in
architecture, minus the erotic sculptures, and we learn that the Jains are
quite unusual. For one thing, they
don’t wear clothes or shoes – nothing.
There’s a slew of photos of naked Jain (men only) and they pluck the
hair from their head and bodies (pluck not cut as that would be harming a
living organism). No Jain women
(too smart?) and I can’t understand how one gets more Jains . . . altogether
unusual to say the least.
Postscript - I just learned today that there are two Jain sects. One of them admits women and actually wears clothes - white robes!
This remarkable day had a great surprise which I'm putting up as another post.
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