When we toured India a few years ago as part of a wider journey, one of the goals was to visit a range of religious locations. They are always interesting from an architecture point of view but broadening the kid’s knowledge was also beneficial. Here (i think!) is a section of Brihadishvara Temple in Thanjavur. I really should take better notes! Either way, it’s an impressive structure and was a real highlight to explore.
Whatever you can do to get to this place, do it! There are several temples like this… it’s so beautiful and foreign. Once again,, my family and I were the only white people there! I really like these sorts of places… I remember at one time, my daughter Isabella was surrounded by a bunch of Indian kids and grownups that had never seen a white person. They were staring at her and stroking her cheek. It was really sweet (nothing creepy)… Isabella was a little freaked out of course, but I think she kinda liked it too!
You can see more from Tanjavur in a few clips in this video I made last year – enjoy!
Daily Photo – Exploring Tanjavur, India
Wow, how amazing are these temples? One thing you can’t see are the dozens of monkeys running around all over the structure. It was like the monkeys were ruling this thing and simply allowing humans to walk underneath it. This is another vertirama… rather hard to put together, truth be told… all a handheld shot, believe it or not! 🙂
I have some of these now… be sure to tune into “Treyratcliff” on Snapchat to see some ridiculous things. My plan is to have my 8-year-old daughter Scarlett use them to record me whenever she wants and then just send the silly video to my account automagically. This might be a terrible plan.
Daily Photo – Another Pilgrimage in India
This is one of many beautiful temples we visited as a family in the south of India. Because we were at so many remote places, there were hardly any (and often zero) white people there. Many Indians that would travel to these places would come from very far away. They usually traveled in packs of 15-40 and they all had the same outfits… almost like uniforms, representing their home village. It was so cool to see how colorful they were. I could just sit here with my camera and see group after group after group coming through the temple, each completely unique in their own way.
And here’s our video from when we visited Thanjavur. I got in trouble for flying a drone here, but you didn’t hear that from me.
Daily Photo – Resting under a tree in India
Thanjavur, India, is another new place I had never been before. We went there via train, and I think it’s probably one of the best ways to get around the country if you want to see a lot of things. Dealing with airports is a huge pain, always, but especially so in India. Just getting to the airport, security, travel, waiting, more car transport, checking in, unpacking… that’s a whole day right there! If you stay on a train, you can leave all your stuff there and just take quick car rides around to see locations.
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!
The Center of Consciousness.
Sisters grooming.
Isabella has been in about 1000 photos now — many of these people have never seen white people before in person.
Scarlett gets the third eye blessing from Shiva and says shell never rub it off.
