Visit to Konark

A trip that seemed to form out of thin air. Maybe every trip does, but this felt more so because of the way it came about. 

Surekha was coming down from New Zealand, and she calls a couple months back to say "smitha, chal ek trip banaa, mein teen din jaldi aare, kahin tho chalthe hain" .  And we start with thinking of a drive to Bidar, and then go all the way to thinking Darjeeling, Madurai, Kajuraho, Lucknow ......and finally zero in on Konark. As random as that.

This is the tour we did ....Bhuvaneshwar, Konark, Puri and Chilka Lake. (the red line). 

We landed at Bhuvaneshwar, drove down to Puri, 60 kms from Bhuvaneshwar and that was our base. Puri, has some lovely places to stay alongside the beach. Only issue was that the dates we picked happened to be a long weekend and it was ever so crowded. Didn't stop us doing all that we wanted though, and actually more.

Day 1 we did Konark, Day 2 was Jagannath Puri temple and Chilka Lake. And Day 3 was just more (inefficient planning left us with almost a whole day to fill in with miscellaneous stuff) and we did just that. Loads of shopping, the Shanthi stupa at Dhauli, Lingraj mandir and the Ekambarnath ayurvedic garden in Bhuvaneshwar 

Let me start with Konark.

The Konark sun temple is a UNESCO heritage site and is said to be on many of the seven wonders of the world lists. It is a 13th century construction, a temple structure built  as a gigantic chariot to the Sun God Surya, with 12 pairs of massive wheels and drawn by seven huge galloping horses. It has amazingly beautiful and elaborate carvings on the wheels, pillars and walls. 

While a major part is in ruin and we can only see it from the outside, it can easily take a few hours even for casual visitors like us, so intricate are it's sculptures. 

As said by Rabindranath Tagore 'here the language of stone surpasses the language of the human'

Our first sighting as we got off the car:

A clearer picture

The famed konark wheels, from which Ashoka drew inspiration for the Ashoka Chakra, which is today India's emblem.

 

The temple is believed to have been built by Narasimhadeva Deva of the Eastern Ganga Dynasty in 1255 CE.

Dedicated to the sun god, the temple is said to denote the passage of time. Each wheel is a sun dial and can be used to tell the time to the minute. It is said that the seven horses represent the seven days of the week, and twelve wheels the months of the year.

The sculptures have a theme. The base is a lot of animals, real and mythical including dragons and giraffes, clearly showing African and Chinese influence. There is  a lot of art and war, a lot of snake (nagakanyas), hunting scenes, rampaging elephants, dashavatar (atleast eight of the avatars) and scenes from daily life. Representing time from every dimension I guess.

There is a  whole level devoted to very graphic erotica, which by any standards is bold. It's bold, not just in its level of detail, but also in concept. After a while of walking around, sculptures of a single man and woman seem passe...there is lesbian and homosexual sculptures, voyeuristic participation, threesomes and more. 

In a society as closed as ours, it's interesting to see so much explicit erotica, and especially fascinating was to hear the guides explain to tourists. I overheard this one guide say to a group "sir, this position very difficult, woman has to lift leg like this", and then to see the discomfort of unsuspecting parents who had come with young children, youngsters unable to keep a straight face...all adding to the experience. 

Once we were done with our walking around, the two of us just sat around a couple of hours purely observing all of this, and ofcourse to take in the energy and experience of a space from hundreds of years back that yet reverberates with so much artistic overtone and energy.

Pictures of the wheels, pillars and walls 

Each of the twenty four wheels, and each spoke of the wheel had different sculptures, and just look at the intricacy of design.

One of the many erotic panels. I hesitate to put them up as single pictures because of the level of exaggerated detail.

A series on dancers. There's a lot of odishi dance poses, so graceful even in stone.

The half snake figurines made me almost think that one needed ones kundalini energy to be awakened to create such high energy art. 

There are three idols of the Sun god in different directions, each placed to catch sunrays during dawn, noon and dusk. It is said that there was a huge magnet and several layers of iron used to have the main idol suspended in air. Local legend says the magnet was so huge as to disturb the compasses of passing ships and was hence removed by the Portugals who did a lot of trade with the region, after which a lot of the temple collapsed.

While there are many a theory of why the temple collapsed, what is known is that in 1903 the temple was filled with sand and permanently sealed to avoid further collapse.

It has scaffoldings on a lot of walls where restoration work seems ongoing. Inspite of the scaffoldings and most of it in ruins, it is still an overarchingly beautiful and an overwhelming experience. Can't help all the adjectives, no ordinary words can capture.

More pictures, well, more personal pictures.....

A massive tree that looked over a few hundreds of years old at the least. Just loved being there.

The market on the other side, with lots of local handcraft and ofcourse replicas of the famed konark wheels.(which ofcourse I also got :)

After all the selfies, and our guide gone, we got one guy to do a final picture to capture us, totally tired and fully satiated as we were end of day.