Two week ago, I had an overdose with Indian temples. I went on a field work with my professor and spent around 10 hours driving and walking around city of Barkur, once upon a time really important city for the whole area around it. I saw more than 15 temples, 5 water tanks, 3 schools, 2 hospitals, 1 church, 1 mosque, 1 destroyed fort and countless number of other buildings that we had to write down on the map. I guess that human brain has a limited amount of space for receiving new informations, as at the end of the day I ended up with a horrible headache.
Most of the temple structures had a central plan – a building with an inner courtyard and a temple in its center. The day we went to Barkur was one of the first days of a 10 days long festival called Navratri. During 9 nights and 10 days, followers of Hindu religion worship 9 forms of a goddess Shakti, trough dancing and singing. In almost every temple that we visited that morning we had the opportunity to see a ceremony. People were very hospitable; they gave us a glass of delicious badam milk and invited us to have a lunch with them. Unfortunately, we had to refuse, because of the huge number of temples that we had to visit.
One of the things I noticed during the visit is that almost every temple had sculptures or motives of cobra curved in stone. Scary fact, which I found out, is that whole area around Bakrur, including Manipal, is famous as an area rich with cobra snakes! Later on, some friends told me that they saw a lot of snakes around here! Luckily, for now, I didn’t see any.
Some of the bigger temples had water tanks on the side, which were, and still are, used for watering the fields during the periods without rain. We had a break on the shore of one of them, just long enough to drink a refreshing coconut juice. After that, we headed back home, with totally filled up map in our hands. The job was done!
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