Traveling Ratcliff Photo Circus Around The World!
Day 12 – Exploring Remote Temples
The day started at Auroville, the experimental City of Dawn, deep off-track in South India. This place reminds me of a sci-fi combo of Burning Man and a cult! Well cult is probably the wrong word… but I’m really into meditation and stuff, so a lot of it appeals to me. This city was started in 1968 by “The Mother” (cult-signals ringing in head) and it’s open to the whole world, but only by appointment and if you give up all other religions. There are actually people from over 50 countries living here… they plan to grow it to 50,000 people. There’s a huge golden sphere inside of which you can “concentrate” in front of a crystal ball which has golden sunlight mechanically reflected into it, unless it is cloudy or there is unconcetrated rain. I’m joking, but I actually would like to go inside of there and meditate. Anyway, I found the whole place fascinating… it’s kind of when you are sitting around with your friends saying, “You know what, if I built my own city, it would look like THIS.”
We spent some time in Puducherry as well, shopping, eating and exploring. There’s a huge beach there that fronts on the Bay of Bengal and the kids had fun running around there.
We also went to visit Brihadeshwarea Temple in Thanjavur, another UNESCO World Heritage site. What an amazing temple! I took a ton of photos but have not had time to process any of them yet. Stay tuned on the site for some of those!
Then in Trichy, we visited Sri Rangam Temple, which is India’s largest temple complex dedicated to Lord Vishnu. I got in a sweet quad flight there and took a ton more photos. Once again, the girls were mobbed by Indians who had never seen white people before… this place was so remote, we didn’t even see any white people except for ourselves. Many people that come here travel from remote villages in India for a pilgrimage to this incredible temple, so they’ve only seen white people in movies and such. The girls had about 1,000 photos taken of them!
Daily Photo – Babel
