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India

Ellora - Kailasa Temple

February 2008


Temple 16 in the Hindu caves - the Kailasanatha Temple - is the feather-in-the-cap of Ellora.
It is a fantastic temple literally carved out of the side of a mountain. The outline was gouged out of the rock, and workers chipped away and carved the entire structure out of the existing rock face: it is one single hunk of rock! There is nothing built up or 'constructed' here - everything was carved straight out where it stood! It is about one and a half times the size of the Parthenon in Greece, and is rightly named as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Of course, that's not what interested Breck. He was more taken with the pukish yellow water in one of the underground caverns...


or in bat-hunting throughout the many darkened rooms.

We were all taken aback by the sheer size of the place, and all the rooms to hike, climb, and explore!!
  

Seen from above, you can get an idea of how gigantic an undertaking this was


and how much space there was for fun!

Alea and Breck had plenty of good times finding and riding on all the carved elephants
They also managed to find a few more 'sacred' places to climb - but they were polite and made sure not to go anywhere that would offend someone.
There were other groups that wandered in while we were there, everything from tons of school groups visiting the temples to college students sketching the friezes.

And in between visits to the gigantic statues, the kids played model to many, many of the different people - they just wanted a picture taken with the white kids!!
Wandering under the rough cut cliffs, we saw fantastic carvings everywhere we looked - things ranging from stories out of Hindu mythology right through gory images of human sacrifice (by a four-armed god, no less).
We even did our own best imitation of the Buddha and a multi-armed god (see that extra hand?)
And, of course, what would a good old fashioned Hindu temple be without a few scenes straight out of the Kama Sutra?!

Susan's favorite was the one of the couple on the left, since we'd never seen the dancers portrayed as kissing.

Hmm. How risqué!!

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