Appreciating the “miracles” of Bara Padampura, Rajasthan

After the successful darshans of Choolgiriji (Khaniyaji) and Sanganer; we arrived at our final destination for this quick trip and that was, Padampura. Padampura is a small town (around 33kms from Jaipur) and famous for the temple of miracles i.e. Bara Padampura. This unique temple is known for the beautiful and captivating idol of our 6^th Teerthankar (God), Bhagwan Padamprabhuji. This idol had appeared in Vaishakh Shukla 5 V.S. 2001 and is a small idol of 2 feet and 4 inches in a padmasan (sitting) position and made of white (though now looks off-white / yellow) stone.

The Bara Padampura Temple

Discovering the “secrets” of the Jain Temple Sanghiji in Sanganer, Rajasthan

Continuing my journey (from my previous post Choolgiriji, Khaniyaji) on the Jain temple trail, I reached the small town of Sanganer, which is situated 16 km south of Jaipur City on National Highway No. 12, Kota – Jaipur Road. This is a historical town and famous for textile printing and handmade paper industry. However its most famous for the old and beautiful Shri Digamber Jain temple Sanghiji.

This is an ancient temple in red stone and exquisite carvings, that represents the old style of architecture and was completed in many phases. Per the inscription of V.S. 1011 in one of the pylons (Toranas), the last phase was completed in 10th century A.D. In this temple the Mulnayak Pratima (main idol) is of our first tirthankar, Lord Adinath (Rishabh Dev), made of local stone and expected to be more than 4000 years old. This temple is seven storied and has sky-high ‘shikharas’ (spires) and the inner sanctum is a stone shrine with skyhigh eight Shikharas (pinnacles). The inner temple is a stone shrine with three pinnacles and carvings of lotuses, creepers and elephants pouring water from pitchers held in their trunks all around.

The main entrance of the temple

Understanding the term “being at peace” in Choolgiriji (Khaniyaji), Rajasthan

Since I have started traveling, I have discovered numerous new categories within travel – rural, dark, voluntarism, responsible, eco, cultural, spiritual, action, active, etc etc. But along with experimenting with all of these, I have tried another  type of travel that is both rural and a spiritual experience. This is the Jain temple trail i.e. visiting ancient Jain temples in smaller unknown villages and towns in India. Initially I didn’t like temples and like everyone my age group around had to be either dragged or emotionally blackmailed by parents into visiting them. But after a few such recent visits something in me has definitely changed. I have now come to like these visits and consider them a photographic and a spiritual delight. Many of these temples are really ancient and hence have a unique architecture, carvings, intricate patterns, some in ruins, etc that make beautiful pictures and on the other hand somehow these temples just bring about a certain sense of peace / harmony within me. My mom says, this because of the ultimate faith that people who built these temples then had in religion which still lingers in these old places / temples.

Entrance to the temple, Choolgiriji, Khaniyaji

Weekly Photo Challenge – Focus

The topic for this week’s weekly photo challenge is Focus inspired by Matthew George’s post on focus, in which he talks about highlighting the subject of your picture frame using the concept of depth of field. Using this concept and playing with the aperture settings, a single sight can be captured in multiple ways thereby making your audience concentrate on different subjects with each frame.

For this topic, I have decided to share my picture of an Indian Roller bird that I clicked in the jungles of Rajasthan last winter. When I first saw this bird, I just gaped at it for a while as I was so awestruck with its colors and then I remembered my camera and clicked this bird in about 12 different poses. I guess it enjoyed my foolishness and hence decided to humor me by patiently sitting and modeling for me 🙂 In this pic, I have just focused on the bird, resulting it to be sharp and the resulting background to be blurred.

The Indian Roller posing for my camera

A Food Guide to Pushkar

Pushkar is any vegetarian and budget traveler’s food paradise. 🙂

The majority of the travelers visiting this town are foreigners and they live here for long periods of time. But the entire town is a temple town, hence any form of meat and alcohol is strictly prohibited. This has resulted in all kinds of cuisine being available here in their pure vegetarian avatars. This town is really small and for all practical purposes just one long winding road, but the number of eating options in terms of places and variety is just mind-boggling. And all this is available at dirt cheap prices.

So it’s no wonder that when a foodie like me landed in this town what happened – well I literally ate my way through the streets. My friends, Sonal and Partha had been to Pushkar a couple of months before us and they had spent about 10 days exploring this place and its hidden food gems. We tried their recommendations and found some of our own too. We were literally eating every 30 minutes here.

Since I loved the food here so much, I  am now listing the same below for everyone who is visiting this amazing town to try out and enjoy. Since I was busy eating and now reminiscing while writing, the descriptions are quite short. Hence take this as a teaser and visit Pushkar for your own experience. 🙂

• Pohas – Every morning all along the roads people come with carts and set up street side  poha stalls. Poha is a kind of flat rice which is cooked with vegetable likes potato and peas and served with a garnish of fresh tomatoes, coriander etc. This simple dish served in a newspaper for just Rs 5 is the most amazing poha that I have ever eaten anywhere in India or at home. This is a must try for at least one day breakfast. 

A Poha Stall

Ajmer – my visit and impressions

During our stay in Pushkar, we decided to book a local cab for a day and explore Ajmer. Now Ajmer and Pushkar are pretty much twin cities just separated by a hill and a 15 – 20 minute drive. Based on my own experience, I recommend that everyone stay in Pushkar and visit Ajmer for a day trip only.

We started our day with a visit to the Jain temple of Nareli. Nareli is a new temple complex that is around 7 kms ahead of Ajmer and is a kind of township. There is a main temple building built-in the centre on the ground and 23 small temples built atop the hill behind this main temple. The color of the stone used for these temples is a mix of pink and red which contrasts with the barren hills around this place and contribute to the character of this complex. There are gardens all around the main temple and they have small rooms built with replicas of Jain beliefs on conducting their life and small boards which explain the principles of Jainism in the most simple language.

Jain Temple, Nareli, Ajmer

Meeting the various forms of Lord Shiva in Pushkar

Pushkar is a small Hindu temple town in Rajasthan that is full of temples, either every alternate building is a temple or every house has a temple. In addition to the famous (and one of the few in the world) Lord Brahma temple, there are numerous temples dedicated to Lord Shiva here. According to Hindu mythology when Lord Shiva’s wife – Lady Sati died, Shiva cried so much that his tears created 2 ponds and one them is in Pushkar.

Hence it was not surprising that while walking around this town we came across Lord Shiva in various forms. While it was prohibited to take pictures inside the temples, we captured Shiva on camera in various other places. I am sharing a few of these here in my 100th post today.

We found this small kid wandering on the road dressed exactly like Lord Shiva. However unlike the Lord he demanded a small fee to be photographed. 🙂

A kid dressed as Lord Shiva

The Pushkar Experience

On the third day of our Rajasthan trip, we found ourselves in the small desert town of Pushkar, where we spent nearly 3 days.  And I must say that nothing had prepared us for what to expect in this visit. For starters, this town is very very small (you can walk from one corner to the other numerous times in a day), its full of temples (every building is either a temple or every house has a temple), has more foreigners than Indians, is brimming with every possible color, is very cheap for everything and all food here is fully vegetarian (non-vegetarian food and alcohol is prohibited here). Though this place is more famous for the Pushkar fair, we decided to visit it before the fair to just get an actual flavor and feel of this town. And I must say, we loved this place.

In Pushkar there is just one main road which is full of shops, eataries and temples. One side of this road are ghats and the Pushkar Lake while on the other side you have the small by-lanes with shops, houses and more temples. The town is so small that you can cover it several times in the day and all on foot. Also, you will notice that there are more tourists than locals and only two kinds of tourists – Indian pilgrims or foreign backpackers. Because of all the international tourists everyone here speaks english and all internal cuisines are available. In fact the food here was so amazing that I’ll write a separate post on it.

While there is nothing per se to see here, there is a world here to experience. So here’s my experience of Pushkar in pictures –

An ancient door of an ancient haveli

Rural Cruising in Rajasthan

After  an exciting Day 1 of our holiday in Bundi, we had decided to start our second day pretty early with a trip to a nearby Jain temple called Bijoliya Parasnath, then return to Bundi for lunch and then start for our long drive to Pushkar.

And in order to manage everything in time, we started pretty early from Bundi at 6.30am (in fact it was so early that we had to wake up the haveli staff to open the doors J) for our journey to Bijoliyaji Parasnath. Now the distance between these 2 places is only around 50 Kms but the drive takes around 2 hours one way, due to the bad conditions of the road.

Drive to Bijoliya Parasnath

Bundi, a small town lost in time

Rajasthan, for some inexplicable reason, has been a place that always beckons me to visit, no matter how many times I have already been there (and I have been there 7 – 8 times already). Hence it’s not surprising that I ended up there yet again for a short holiday in October this year. And like always, this holiday didn’t disappoint us in fact we saw a completely new face of Rajasthan.

For this trip, I decided to visit Bundi (a small town in Rajasthan), drive through a few villages (a rural journey) and ultimately visit Pushkar (the temple town). You can read more on my travel planning and itinerary in my previous post – Travel Plans for a quick trip to Rajasthan.

Bundi, a beautiful palace overlooking the city

We started our trip when our train dropped us at the Kota station at 5am on Day 1. We had booked a cab in advance (since it was early morning), but you can just reach the station and take a cab for Bundi directly. We found our dozing driver and then set off for our journey towards Kesariya Patan.