Shiva Temple Thiruvannamalai

Sathya took us to the Shiva Temple, which Marty had been talking about going to since we were in Nepal. As non-hindus, we weren't allowed to go inside the depths of the temple in Kathmandu, but Marty insisted we'd be able to in Tiru. He was right and it was a powerful experience.

Outside of the temple on the ground were many designs, which I learned were called rangoli, traditionally created by women out of colored rice powder that decorate homes and temples as a form of thanksgiving, an adornment of the earth that nurtures us.

The Shiva temple is over 1000 years old and is carved in solid rock ornamented with hundreds of figures of gods, people, animals and plants. There are towers outside for the lower castes to who weren't allowed to enter the temple itself, but could worship from the outside.

We passed through a number of pillared halls called mandapam, to an inner sanctum (Marty says think of Indiana Jones with flaming torches for light) where the temple's main deity is housed. We were able to easily pass through the line, as we were with a Brahmin.

In this temple there were two inner sanctums, one with a Shiva lingam (a phallic shaped stone which represents the very instant of creation, or rather of regeneration, when the perishable regenerates itself in another form) and another inner sanctum where worship to the "mother goddess" was going on.

In in each tiny inner sanctum there were four or five priests elaborately adorned and covered in ash, performing rituals, offering, and chanting in front of each deity. It was dark, hot, stuffy and wild in there. And the energy was palpable. That's why the video camera was so shaky!

We weren't allows to photograph inside the temple so this is a scene from the outside (though inside the grounds.) Just to put it in perspective, the temple itself has an 20' high and 6' thick outer wall that runs 1/4 of a mile by an 1/8 of a mile. It is a huge space. In the video, you'll see the temple's elephant, Rukmini, whose mother had killed someone the day before Marty happened to visit the temple before in 1993. He was a bit fearful of getting near the elephant, and this video captures his relief and almost ecstatic smile after his darshan with the elephant.

The temple's cowshed housed many baby cows ( I suppose they use the milk the mothers for the services). I loved feeding them, some of them were only a week old. Their sweet demeanor and big brown eyes truly reminded me of my dog TT who passed a few days before we left on this trip.

We're currently posting this from London. We leave for Amsterdam this morning. We have a lot of great video from the Ganges river in Rishikesh. If we have the opportunity, we'll post it before we get back to Arizona. Here's a photo from our room in Rishikesh. More later.