Old Excursions

I was having some trouble coming up with something to write about today. After all it is getting close to the end of the school year (just three more weeks until I fly out of India) and a teacher's motivation goes way way way down as you get closer to the end of the year. So I thought I'd write about two spots that I visited a while back on a day trip from Udaipur.

The first is Kumbalgarh Fort. Constructed on the hills of a small town of rural Rajasthan, it boasts an impressive 15 km of walls protecting the fort and the surrounding land - the only wall construction longer is that of the Great Wall of China. This clearly leaves plenty of space inside the walls for construction. Not just of the fort on the top, but also for the 360 temples which are nestled among the grounds. Built in the 15th century it continued to be expanded and improved until the 19th century when it ceased to be occupied. As you can imagine building such an extensive wall has its own host of problems and there is a legend which accompanies the history of this one. It is said that when the ruler was having trouble constructing the wall in the 1400s, a spiritual leader advised that it would be necessary to have a volunteer for a human sacrifice ritually decapitated. A temple should then be built where his head fell, and the walls and fort along the lines of his body. True or not, there is currently a temple at the main gate of the fort to commemorate the sacrifice. 

The second stop on our day trip was the Shri Ranakpur Jain Temple, an ornate multilevel temple built from 1437-1458. After getting rid of any leather we had on ourselves (the Jain believe deeply in not harming other living beings), verifying we were in a pure state, and getting ourselves down to one camera each, we climbed the stairs up into the white structure. Carved with an impressive amount of detail there we pieces to catch the eye every way you turned. While we couldn't approach the main temple platform, there was plenty to attract attention as we wandered around the inside courtyard of the temple. Filled with columns - each one unique, carvings on the ceilings and the walls, the yellow and red flowers providing a striking contrast to the white marble inside. Truly an example of the exquisite architecture that adorns parts of India.