We went there because of the Temple of Konark. That and it was supposed to be gorgeous and nifty. The first day we were in Bhubaneswar (or Bhuneshwar as the locals pronounce it) we just crashed in our hotel. We had been going non-stop with Help International our last week and our flight left Hyderabad at 6 am. Gross. So by the time we get in to Bhubaneswar (about a two hour ride northeast of Hyderabad) we just wanted to sleep. So we did. In our nice WONDERFUL hotel room. Best part? It was the cheapest hotel of the trip and was by far one of the nicer ones. YAY.
Hotel Lobby
The next day we rent a car and decide to go exploring the area (no we weren't driving, we had a driver). So we go to Konark (about a 2 hour ride in the car) and see the temple there.
It was phenomenal! It was our first ancient Hindu temple and it was so intricate! We were greeted by these guys:
Who are actually quite tall....
So despite having a student card, a lot of the places in India you have to pay the foreigner fee regardless. Which for American prices, it's not too bad. It's only $5-6 for most places but it is $18-20 for the Taj Mahal alone. For Indian prices, those are HUGE. Literally we had been living like a local for 3 months and then we go traveling and have sticker shock! Example, what we paid for our two tickets to see this monument ended up being 1/3 the cost of what we paid to rent the driver for the entire day. Oi, thankfully I won the HELP International social media July competition so that money helped go towards our travel costs.
But enough griping, back to the temple! It was amazing to think that this temple was built in 1250 AD and it was still in as good of shape as it was. That alone was phenomenal.
One view of the temple with one of the wheels.
The wheels are famous for this temple and there are something like 16 around the entire complex. To show you how large they are, here is a picture of me in front for scale:
Yeah, I'm short, but not that short. They were so neat! And there were thousands of figurines carved all over the temple. Some were erotic since the ancient Hindus believed those images were sacred and therefore went on their temples. No pictures of that, however here are some pictures of the hubster in front of some musicians and artists:
After being there for more than an hour and exploring every inch of the place that we could, we took a few parting shots and then went to our next stop.
Proof that we were there
One of the deities represented on the temple
Some more of the carvings on the temple
The whole temple from the first temple pavilion
View through the entryway pavilion
View from the side.
It was such a fun experience. Except when I kept freaking Drew out because I'd have blood running down my face. (Sweat + stitches + old blood = soaking through bandage...)
After this, we hopped in the car and went along the coast to Puri. There we saw the temple of Lord Jagganeth. This is where the term Juggernaut comes from. Apparently once a year the devotees pull these massive chariots through town. Once loaded, these chariots take thousands of people to pull them. It wasn't hard to imagine how.
That's a chariot when it's stripped down
Although we couldn't go into the temple, it was fascinating to see how many people were going into it. It wasn't a holiday and it's not a very touristy town, and yet because the place is sacred to so many Hindus, they come to pay devotions whenever they can.
The temple
The temple with devotees going into it
And just to scale things, here is my view of the square with the chariots and the temple.
Again, notice how small the people are.
After this long day, we went back to the hotel, had a nice dinner and slept in for the next day. We left the morning after going to Konark/Puri and we were able to get my stitches out (finally) just before embarking on our last leg of our journey. Drew and I had two different flights to Delhi, but we were able to find each other ok. We took the metro to the New Delhi Railway station and then realized we needed to get to the OLD DELHI Railway station. It took us ten minutes to convince the porters that we needed to get to a different station. That night we were taking a train to Jaipur and we needed a transport.
Finally we got a nice honest guy and he took us on a bike rickshaw! He loaded Drew, myself, a full sized suitcase, two carry on suitcases and two bookbags all in the back of his rickshaw. He then proceeded to take us through the Old Delhi Muslim Quarter. It was AMAZING. It was so much fun to see the markets at night especially since it was during Ramadan (or Ramzan as the Indians call it). It was so neat to see people up and about (at 10 at night no less) acting like it was morning or the beginning of the day (which for some of them it might have been). I didn't want to take a picture for fear of having something make us stick out even more, but I managed to snatch one of the back of our driver. It was such and adventure and we made it to the train station on time! Next day: Jaipur!
Our wonderful driving working hard for his money!
No comments:
Post a Comment