It has almost been a year since I last wrote here... Now I have little time and even lesser inclination to keep writing a blog, but there is this popular pressure to find a place to upload and share my pictures, mainly... and I think this would be as good a place as any to do that...

Last week I was traveling in the Garhwal region of the Indian state of Uttara-Khand, and these pictures were clicked at different stages of my journey... Inshallah, I shall find some time to write about my travels as well... but as for today, I have the pictures I took in the temple town of Jyotirmath. Most of the pictures that follow are of the Nrisingha Swamy temple (or so I think it was called), an impressive stone structure; interesting for its purity of form and immensely atmospheric setting amidst the surrounding Shivalik ranges. The priests claimed that the temple was established by Adi Shankara in the seventh century, the same time when he established this town as his Uttarāmnāya (Northern) math. The images of the deities were surprisingly beautiful, exuding an aura of great antiquity and at the same time appearing as a culmination of an artistic style prevalent in the temples of Garhwal... Such grace, as seen in the statue of Shiva with Parvati for instance, I have only ever seen in the Chola Bronzes in Tanjore...

Enough talk... now for the pictures...

We begin with a few shots of the temple...







Garuda stands guard at the temple door...




The temple ramparts...




Hara Parvati...



Narayan with Sankarshan to the side...



Chandi...




The Nine Planets....



Vinayaka....




Jyotirmath is indeed a magical place; neither as crowded nor as afflicted with spiritual overkill as Haridwar or Rishikesh, the spiritual power of the place seems palpable, fresh here... like a thin film the spirit covers all things mundane and makes it shine and drip with madhu... madhu vata ritayate, madhu ksharanti sindhavah, madhvirna santwosadhi... Madhu-Vidya... the doctrine of the honey, the doctrine of the secret delight that is the sheen of the world and all worldly goods, that honey, that delight is suddenly palpable here...

A little higher up from this delightful little temple happens to be the modern structure of the Shankaracharya Math... No photographs could be taken in here, maybe when I shall return here again... The place is of little architectural or artistic import but it does encompass a cave in which it is believed Adi Shankara transmitted the doctrine to Trotakacharya... The cave has an amber Shivalinga, a most astonishing piece of amber, if only for its sheer size, quite as large as two palms of a full grown man; this happens to be worshiped here as ChandraMoulishwara. Outside is the temple of the Shakti, Rajrajeshwari TripuraSundari. The priest is a young man of maybe 23 years or so by the name of Acharya Manoj Kumar Pandeya... a delight to talk to and exuding an air of belief that is rarely seen in hindu priests... The place is miraculously deserted, the temple nestles in the bosom of the hills, the conch sounds for Sandhya. Sandhya is sandhi, the yoking together of two times, two lights, the rent in the fabric of the world; through this rent we seek to reach the heavens, to that light beyond, to those waters of knowledge, to the apah... With Vedic chants he envokes Rudra and his Shakti, with ritual gestures and with the simplest of implements: a little water, a conch shell, a handful of rice grains, some vermilion, and fire... and the vehicle of the words, syllables and meters of ancient poetry in a forgotten tongue, he makes the vehicle on which will ride our intentions, on which our intentions reach the land beyond... I feel drawn back there again as I speak of it... nothing changed perceptibly, nothing at all, there was just a small shift in my perspective, just for a moment, as if a curtain had been blown aside in the wind for a moment and I caught a glimpse of something beyond through the rent... It is the closest i have been to magic...

Then the doors of the cave were shut. In the gloom the priest approached the Shiva Linga with a burning brand. The lamp was placed right behind the amber Linga. For few moments the stone walls of the cave were bathed in a soft silver glow... Chandramoulishwar seemed to be on fire, a second moon glowing with a silver glow... and in the bosom of the transparent god I saw the fossilized remains of a long dead dragonfly....


A few more pictures of Jyotirmath follow...



Pine forests dot the hills...



The Alaknanda flows on through a gorge into the Tehri Hydel Power Project below. I perceived a lot of popular anger at the rampant construction of dams...



The clouds come in...