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Tuesday, 18 October 2011

Kajuraho - home to the "kamasutra" temples

India is such a big country! The distances are looong and even if you travel with fast trains, it will take some time to get from A to B!
This time we have to sleep at the airport again, since thenext day we are flying from Chennai (South east) to Mumbai (Center west) at5:40 a.m!

David finds always a way to get some sleep

From Mumbai we still have 1200km and 20 hours of train ahead us to get to Kajuraho, where we will see one of the most famous temples in India: the so called Kamasutra temples!

We arrive in the afternoon and stay at at the nice “yogiashram” hotel out of town, with a nice balcony and rooftop!



On the first day we rent some bikes and go for a city tour

Small temple in the old village

Buffalos bathing

Never touch a bottle or cup with your lips
(this is a golden rule to stay healthy while traveling here)

Man bathing on the "Ghats" or steps at the river

Next day 6 a.m. we go to the see the temples to see what is it, that all travelers have been talking about. The site is really amazing, with about 25 stone temples, 5 of which are renovated. It's like huge stone mountains when seen from afar, but when you get closer you get to appreciate the finest sculptures, depicting daily life here in the middle age and "also" some erotic reliefs, that actually represent just around 10 percent of the sculptures but are the most know feature about Kajuraho.







And well...they are very eye catching as you can see


But here we learn that these are not depictions of the kamasutra positions as a lot of people think in the west! The dynasty that built these temples believed in the union of man and wife as being divine and source of the creation of the universe. Depicting this kind of scenes was auspicious and was supposed to please the gods!
They also thought of women as being divine and built temples for the female goddesses called "the 64 yoginis". Here I am at a temple dedicated to them, the statues are missing...I hope they don't mind





We end the day doing some yoga for our overstrained backs!

Kakasana (The crow)

Dhanurasana (The arch)

Shirshasana (Headstand) - Caro

Shirshasana (Headstand) - David

For more photos on the architecture, you can check my architecture blog
http://n-movimiento.blogspot.com/2011/10/close-up-kajuraho-temples.html

Caro

2 comments:

  1. Caro me encanta esta aventura!!!! disfrutala bastante les mando un abrazote Silvia B

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  2. increible...como pueden hacer esas poses del yoga...wow!! estan buenisimas todas las fotos!!!!
    saludos de melanie y el chele

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