Photos from Goa

And here’s the last batch of photos from India :) If you want to read what I wrote about Goa, you’ll find it here and here.

What would you expect in Goa? Beaches

and palms

and the ocean

and starfish and various other animals.

But there are also lots of fields (mostly rice, I guess),

places where you can awaken the inner officer in you

and kids playing cricket.

A street in Panjim

Colorful temple on a hill

And there are lots of churches and Christians

But also Hindu temples, this is Sai Baba in one of them.

I think they had a free lunch in the temple.

A wonderful and cheap thali for lunch

And some modern buildings as well

The well-preserved body of St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552) is in a church in Old Goa,

in this coffin (they show it only once every 10 years).

Slogans on cultural heritage (read some!)

Ruin of a cathedral

A christian cemetery

One of the many nativity scenes that appeared around the streets on the Christmas Eve.

And a lots of stars and lights!

Decoration at the Goa airport

Photos – Hampi

The original posts are here and there.

Stain around the staircase in the hotel in Hubli – it’s probably not blood, just results from spitting chewed paan (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paan).

Hampi

The main temple in Hampi.

A cat in the temple

Repairing the temple

The temple elephant Lakshmi

… eating a banana (she likes cononuts as well and can easily open one by holding it in her trunk and banging it against the ground).

Bananas on sale

and on a tree

They draw these signs in front of houses to ward off evil spirits.

Beware of the wheerpool!

The thin columns nicely resonate.

A small hidden shrine

Ruins surrounded by the jungle (or banana trees)

I forgot what this buiding was for :)

but it’s beatiful!

Hanuman’s temple on the top of a hill

Hanuman, the monkey god, was born here (as well as in other 4 places elsewhere).

with the mark on the forehead

One day I borrowed a high-quality bike – it even won prices in France and Switzerland! The brakes didn’t work much, but the bike was quite slow, so it didn’t matter much.

I went to the small Anegundi village. This is the old palace there.

I think these marks may be related to the fierce goddess Kali.

I had a wonderful lunch in a smal local restaurant.

Want to play?

Sunset over the rice fields

A shrine to Siva. The thing in the middle is lingam, one of his representations.

Cows and pigs eat anything,

even a poster.

Truck full of people

The boats across the river often get very full!

A poster for a hotel, I guess…

Photos – Aurangabad

Here are the original posts :)

Need some help with math?

The Ellora caves

Full of bats

And of tourists, pushing and shoving as usual

The biggest “cave” – the Kailasa temple

Any guesses what are these holes for?

Monkeys

There are of course also small, boring caves,

sometimes filled with water.

Some caves need repairs (no big surprise, after almost 1500 years).

Some are unfinished (or stolen – although typically it would be the head missing, not the body)

The Kailasa temple from above – it’s the biggest “statue” in the world (made from one piece of stone)!

Monkeys are everywhere

Usually it’s cows eating the trash on the streets. But sometimes it’s a horse :) I’ve even seen some people riding on horses in the crazy traffic!

A small shop

The Daulatabad fort

with a tall minaret inside

and a few small Hindu temples

Ceiling in one of them

The school trips were really excited to take pictures with me.

The walls you can see are the outer walls of the fort – they are around 5K long!

A friendly keeper of a small shrine at the top of the hill.

Also goats are living inside

Monkeys coming

to eat banana

and observe me.

Lots of cannons inside

A small and friendly mosque in Aurangabad

Unfortunately, I don’t remember whose tomb it is.

After seeing this you realize that in India it unfortunately doesn’t make much difference if you put your trash in a trashcan or just throw on the ground.

Seeing a Bollywood movie is a must in India! Even though it was in Hindi, I had no trouble following the plot. And it was in 3D, making the action scenes even more heroic! But disappointingly, there were only 2 dances.

A hostel for 35 rupees (~75 cents) per night. I wonder how it looks inside.

Bibi qa Maqbara, the “poor man’s Taj”.

Inside

Pigeons are also everywhere.

In the smaller and much less touristy Aurangabad caves.

There are surprisingly many Buddhists in Aurangabad, this is at a temple just below the caves.

And there is quite a lot of green parrots in India!

Photos – Mumbai

I’ve been in Mumbai 3 times: the first day when I arrived to India I went to a National Park, then on my way from Goa to Aurangabad I had a look at a museum and a zoo, and finally at the beginning of January I spent there 10 days during the conference.

The National Park is surrounded by the city.

All kinds of animals live there – monkeys,

a bored lion (at the Tiger and Lion Safari),

ants,

and of course people in simple huts,

but even in whole villages.

And there are the Kanheri caves (cut and inhabitated by Buddhist monks some 2000 years ago).

(More photos of caves coming, the ones in Ellora are much more impressive!)

The second time – outside the museum.

There are not too many animals in the zoo, so I really wasn’t sure if the crocodiles were alive or just statues. They certainly didn’t move at all.

Then I took a train from CST – Chatrapati Shivaji Terminal.

The trains can get quite crowded

(although this is nothing compared to my trip from Aurangabad to Nasik – there I thought I’d rather not take photos).

Sellers of all kinds of food and drinks are everywhere in the train stations, but they also walk through the train.

The third time in Mumbai. This house was just opposite my room in the hotel.

Professor Arthur giving one of the talks at the conference.

Gateway of India

Mumbai is a long peninsula going into the Arabian sea, so it is not surprising that there are many boats.

The rocks between the high and low tide lines are glues together by mussels.

I went for a lunch to a luxurious Khyber restaurant, maybe 10-times more expensive than a normal one (but still it was around $10).

The Navy had some exhibition in front of the Prince of Wales Museum.

One day during the conference we went on a quite strenuous hike. First several hours up a steep slope (including being lost and taking a detour for maybe 2 hours). At the top of the hill there is a nice small village surrounded by (the ruins of) 2 forts.

And there are some Buddhist caves as well. It was great that there were almost no tourists at all!

I needed some clean clothes for the conference, so besides from buying a shirt, I had laundry done in Mumbai. And it was certainly done in a dhobi ghat just like this one (only probably larger).

The Banganga tank. Were you ever so close to the center of the world (i.e., the wooden pole in the middle)?

The famous (and very dirty) Chowpatty beach.

They clearly like this kind of “warning” slogans.

Gandhi in his museum.

Photos – Nasik

I’m finally back home (in fact, already in Vienna for another math conference). Here are some photos from Nasik, one of the most sacred cities in India, where I spent four days around the New Year.

Sacred river Godavari flows through the city.

People bathe there,

search for coins or anything valuable in the dirt,

wash clothes in the river,

and sell various strange things on the banks.

Some of the shopkeepers (most Indians are very happy to have their photos taken).

Like this guy, selling colored powder for the dots on the forehead.

Fruit and vegetable market.

Cows are the most important part of traffic.

Everywhere, there are various small or big shrines,

gods,

and temples.

On a trip to a not very touristy village Bhandardara.

This was the only cloudy day in the whole month in India!

Quite a nice climb, first through the jungle and then up the cliff ;)

I wonder what lives inside.

Another day I went to the (even more) sacred village Trimbak. In the end I convinced myself that I have to try the “sacred bath” at least once, so I washed in this tank (with the help of a couple of buckets of water by enthusiastic Indians).

A temple at the top of the hill. Notice the goat!

Our new family shop

And then I took a train back to Mumbai for the conference. My biggest success was that I was able to be one of the first people to get on the train, not a small achievement!