Today I thought I should upload some of the good stuff I have seen in India. Among other things I like to do (but somehow dont get to..) Travelling ranks pretty high. Mahabalipuram (or Mahabs as we used to call it when studying in IITM) is a nice 3-4 hr. drive from Chennai, the SOuth Indian city. The drive is along the beach all along, and there are several deserted beaches where you can just jump into the water and have a nice refreshing salt-water bath!
Anyway, the aim in posting this is to tell about the speciality of Mahabs. A peculiarity of India if you dont knwo is that every village,town, city or a hamlet has a temple somewhere nearby. Kings of the past times spent entire fortunes in building grand temples. The peculiarity of Mahabs is that all the temples here are 'monoliths'; meaning they have been carved out of a single rock! What is more profound is the sheer volume of each of these monuments, each temple and ratha (a chariot) is several hundred feet high and extends to very long distances. Every inch of the architecture is decorated with exquisite carvings depicting stories of Gods and Godesses of the past!
The mystiqueness of the place hardly ends here! Legend goes that there are 7 such temples at the same place but 6 of themm are under sea. Recent satellite images show an outline of some massive construction sites along the seashore, a few miles into the sea (Will post the links of the site soon) . Another astonishing thing about the place is that at no place on walls or at any place is the name of a single sculptor or architect found. So much for self-bragging!
I am uploading some photos of the place (they are not mine, but some better photographers took those and find them nice to put here...) .. If you do go to that part of India ever, visit 'Mahabs' without fail!
Adios!
Vaibhav.
Some links:
http://www.tamilnation.org/culture/architecture/temple.htm#Mahabalipuram
http://blogs.sify.com/blog_display.php?blogid=540&pid=17
Anyway, the aim in posting this is to tell about the speciality of Mahabs. A peculiarity of India if you dont knwo is that every village,town, city or a hamlet has a temple somewhere nearby. Kings of the past times spent entire fortunes in building grand temples. The peculiarity of Mahabs is that all the temples here are 'monoliths'; meaning they have been carved out of a single rock! What is more profound is the sheer volume of each of these monuments, each temple and ratha (a chariot) is several hundred feet high and extends to very long distances. Every inch of the architecture is decorated with exquisite carvings depicting stories of Gods and Godesses of the past!
The mystiqueness of the place hardly ends here! Legend goes that there are 7 such temples at the same place but 6 of themm are under sea. Recent satellite images show an outline of some massive construction sites along the seashore, a few miles into the sea (Will post the links of the site soon) . Another astonishing thing about the place is that at no place on walls or at any place is the name of a single sculptor or architect found. So much for self-bragging!
I am uploading some photos of the place (they are not mine, but some better photographers took those and find them nice to put here...) .. If you do go to that part of India ever, visit 'Mahabs' without fail!
Adios!
Vaibhav.
Some links:
http://www.tamilnation.org/culture/architecture/temple.htm#Mahabalipuram
http://blogs.sify.com/blog_display.php?blogid=540&pid=17
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