Travel

Kotilingeshwara – An amazing South Indian temple

kenritley

In the deep south of India, not too far from the Kolar Gold Fields and just on the border between Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, is the amazing Shiva temple called Kotilingeshwara.

It is not a temple in any conventional sense of the word.  It is more of a indoor / outdoor park, filled with thousands upon thousands of small, identical statutes called linga, which is actually a representation of the Indian god Shiva.  Here you can see a few of them, with a huge statute of the sacred cow Nandi in the distance:

Interestingly, I arrived on the day of a festival, and thousands of visitors were expected and beginning to line up. But a cousin of a friend of mine is a police officer who is assigned to this temple, so he let us in early before the crowd.  (That’s him above in the dark khaki clothes, carrying his big long stick that police offices in India are famous for.)

Here’s another look, showing some of them as large as a building (it’s one of the largest in the world), and others as small as tea cups:

I don’t know the details, but I think for the price of a donation to the temple you can arrange to have a lingam dedicated with your name.

Oh, and for those who think that Indian names are quite long and difficult, this name provides a wonderful segue to an upcoming post about Indian names: koti means 10,000,000, linga we talked about above, eshwara means god – hence the name Kotilengeshwara refers to the 10 million manifestations of the god Shiva.

 

Golfing in Manhattan

kenritley

When I lived in New York during the 1980’s, a visitor to this area of Manhattan had a life expectancy that could be measured in minutes.  Today, this whole area on the west of the island is a park, and you can even find a driving range.

Sadly, a tragic side effect of transforming an impoverished, crime-ridden area into a wonderful tourist location was to drive up the cost-of-living so that only very wealthy people can afford to live here.

L’Albufera de València

kenritley

Geologically speaking, these things are not uncommon. A river or estuary that empties into a saltwater sea will sometimes form a lagoon. Over time, the sediment causes the lagoon to become a closed lake, and the water changes from saltwater to freshwater.

That’s what happened here, just south of Valencia in Spain, not too long ago, in the 17th century, L’Albufera de València:

Today it is a wonderful, relaxing place to visit – especially in the warm Spanish evenings.

 

You can see a wonderful old map I discovered hanging in the local village bar.

The small villages are connected to the lake by a series of narrow canals:

By the way, the astute reader will notice that I wrote L’Albufera de València, which is the Valencian language version of the Spanish La Abufera de Valencia.  My Valencian friends tell me that Catalan, although somewhat more well known, is a dialect of Valencian.

A real Oktoberfest – no tourists allowed!

kenritley

Every mid-September thousands if not zillions of tourists around the world descend on the Bavarian city of Munich to drink beer, dance on table tops, eat enormous quantities of pork – and generally enjoy the Oktoberfest.  From time to time, you can still see a native German at this festival, but with all the tourists it is getting increasingly more difficult to do so.

But what a lot of people don’t know: at about the same time the Oktoberfest is held in Munich, a real festival is held in Stuttgart: the Bad-Cannstatter-Volksfest. It’s the second largest outdoor festival in the world (next to the Oktoberfest) – but if you come, you’re likely to only see Germans and their south-German neighbors, Schwabians.

Austrian Cow

kenritley

You just can’t take a bad picture of a good cow!

I took this photo in the foothills of the Austrian Alps:

I have no idea why her ears were sticking out like that, but it was an usually hot day – perhaps extended ears help the cow to keep cool?

Rådhuspladsen

kenritley

Copenhagen is an incredible city – or so I’ve heard. I spent a whopping ten hours here, between flights – and I was so jetlagged I spent at least six hours sleeping in the sun on a park bench here in the Rådhuspladsen.

I have to give the city and its people a lot of credit. I slept on a park bench very enjoyably during the middle of the day, and nobody disturbed me!

When backs are better than fronts – 4

kenritley

Continuing the series, European cathedrals seem really to be excellent candidates for having backs that are better than fronts.

This is Saint Étienne, also known in English as Saint Stephen:

And here’s the church Église Saint-Étienne in Mulhouse, Alsace. As with many churches, the front is really nothing special to see:

But walk around to the back of the cathedral, and you’ll find a real architectural wonder:

 

Where Einstein was born

kenritley

Happenstance is amazing!  I’ve visited the Einstein Museum, in Bern. And I’ve visited Einstein’s apartment, in Bern.

I know that Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, and for a long time it’s been on my bucket list to visit where he was born.

Unfortunately, that house no longer exists. But fortunately, and quite by accident, a stumbled across this strange looking monument on a recent trip to Ulm:

And you can see by the inscription, this is where his birth house originally stood:

What is most amazing are the cobblestones in the streets. As you can see in the first picture above, the statue itself is surrounded by the old pattern of cobblestones.  But those are up against a much newer (and easier to lay down, so presumably less expensive) set of cobblestones.

Were medieval cities planned?

kenritley

It seems unreasonable to think that the streets in medieval cities were somehow planned. But when I travel through medieval cities, I can’t help but notice the large number of small streets that are optimally laid out to frame a view of the large, central cathedral.

This one is Santiago de Compostella, in Spain (from which you can see the Cathedral of St. XXX):

This one is Mulhouse, in Alsace, France (from which you can see the Cathedral of St. Etienne):

 

And this one is Paradeplatz, in Zurich, Switzerland (from which you can see both the Grossmünster and Frauenmünster cathedrals):

Is this just coincidence – or are these cathedrals and towers visible because they were designed to be visible?

Sheep, heath, gorse, moors – and high-tech radar!

kenritley

Recently a friend took me on a tour of Yorkshire, England, including the famous Yorkshire Moors.   But the most stunning part of the landscape was a huge radar installation, operated as part of a giant system deployed in the Cold War to protect the U.S. against nuclear missles:

At first, it was a bit difficult for me to understand why a radar installation in northern England would be much use to safeguard the U.S.  But when you look at how the different systems overlap, it becomes quite clear:

 

Solothurn Seagull

kenritley

A seagull cruises the Aare River in Solothurn. In the background you can see the the St.-Ursen-Kathedrale:

Solothurn is both a village AND a canton (national state) in Switzerland, and it’s name dates back to around the year 0 AD, where it was known by the Romans as Solodurum – so it is amazing how things like names can persist over thousands of years!  And you won’t find many German speakers here: like most areas in this part of Switzerland, the locals speak the Bernese version of Alemannic (a more advanced, evolved version of high German).

Indian Aqueduct

kenritley

If there is one thing that India has done longer and better than just about any other country, it is innovative aqueducts.  Some of the most famous aqueducts are centuries old, such as in the historical city of Hampi; others are still intact after hundreds of years, dotting the rural Indian countryside.

And some of them are quite modern, such as the Varasun Aqueduct:

Helping to provide valuable water from the Kaveri River to farmers as part of a much longer (135 km) canal, the aqueduct is 1.8 kilometers long and towering at an unbelievable height of 16 m.

A True World Wonder – ಶ್ರವಣಬೆಳಗೊಳ

kenritley

In my opinion, the 60-foot-tall statute of the Indian god Bahubali (sometimes called Gommateshwara), carved out of a single piece of granite and located high on a mountain, is without doubt one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.

Here’s the top part of his body – and if you look closely, you can see the visitors on the tower just above his head:

Here is the lower part of his body – and again, be sure to look at the size of the people near his toes:

But if you want to visit ಶ್ರವಣಬೆಳಗೊಳ, also known as Shravanabelagola, it won’t look like these pictures.  I was VERY fortunate and priviledged to be able to visit during the Jain religious ceremony called Mahamastakabhisheka, which is only held every 12 years!

Unfortunately, there is so much about this holy site that I do not know. I’ve never been able to find any documentation about who created the statute and why, how long it took, and how they managed to transport it intact up a very high and very steep mountain.