Our Temple Tour

carvings at the Halebid temple.

We headed to Belur last Friday. The trip began on a sour note, as we had thought the bus would take about 3 hours and in fact it took 5. We arrived at our destination, a small town between Bangalore and the west coast, at around 11, and all the restaurants were closed. We bought some odd pastries at the local bakery and then threw most of them away after the first few bites.

Gilles tries to blend in.

In the morning we walked over to the Belur temple, which is famous for its thousand-year-old carvings. We were quite a tourist attraction ourselves and posed for several photos with Indian young people. After being stared at by the local people at lunch and fighting our way through crowds of vendors (some of them little kids) reducing their prices on things we didn't want, we took the bus to Halebid, another town nearby. We enjoyed traveling through the countryside - the harvest had just been completed and oxcarts carried huge piles of hay along the road.

a Jain prophet
Originally uploaded by qiubuo.

In Halebid we visited three more temples and learned about the prophets of Jainism.

In the evening we had an aperitif with a very nice middle-aged French couple. The wife was a computer scientist and the husband was a nuclear engineer from the CNRS, where Gilles wants to work one day. They told us, in true epic French fashion, about their trip to Pondicherry and Kerala on December 27th, just after the tsunami. They made us want to visit Kerala (if you remember, it's God's own country. Still haven't figured that slogan out).

On Sunday we took a local bus from Belur to Shrivanbelgola to see a huge Jain statue on top of a hill. Apparently we missed out on the real event, which will happen next month and involves hundred of people showering the 50-foot statue with coconut milk and other "offerings." I had a truly religious experience on the way to the town, as we were sitting at the very front of the bus and had a very good view of the driver's method of navigating the road, which was under construction: he would drive very fast, even though we could see another vehicle coming straight towards us, and then he would honk loudly until the other vehicle swerved onto the dirt road beside us. I suddenly understood why everyone here believes in some sort of god, and came to the conclusion that so much spirituality is not good for road safety.

We walked the 500 steps to the prophet barefoot, as is required, and enjoyed the view from the top to the town below. Then we walked through the village to a few other temples, where we gave away all our change to prominently displayed charity boxes and/or prominently displayed charity collectors.

Gilles makes a new friend
Originally uploaded by qiubuo.

We got a bus back to the larger town quite easily, but then had some trouble getting onto one of the "super deluxe" buses back to Bangalore. We ended up having to take a local bus. We got a bit tricked, as we were herded onto a bus just before it started, and before we could see that there were hardly any seats. Luckily a few people got off and we were able to get seats together before the big rush of people, coconuts and sacks of grains arrived for the long haul to the city.