Surya and Pani

My uncle's driver, Ishmail, accompanied me to a couple of places in Northern Gujrat.  The toll road is surprisingly smooth and like a real highway, except that people and livestock walk on it and across it.

Modhera is the site of an impressive 11th century sun temple.  The temple is mostly intact despite being looted of it's gold idol of the Sun God Surya by invading Persians soon after it's construction.  The temple has three main structures, a shrine room, a hall and a well, each one directly behind the other.  As you walk up to the temple the first feature you see is a massive pit, which is actually an inverted stepped pyramid leading to a well at the bottom.    These stepped wells, known as vavs, are particular to Gujrat.  The structures are surprisingly pristine considering they were abandoned 1,000 years ago.  I found my fisrt example of Hindu erotic temple art.  Many more such scenes to come.

From there we drove off to Patana which boasts the grandest of all the vavs, Rani ki Vav, The Queen's Well.  This massive structure has some of the most graceful friezes I have ever seen.  Unfortunately, I left my camera in the car and took my photos on my cell phone, which do no justice to the scale or awesomeness of this monument.  It's out of the way and takes a day to get to there but absolutely worth the time.

I had wanted to also visit one other step well closer to Ahmedabad and the Ashram that Ghandi lived in but, being close to 6, we ran out of time, those'll have to wait until Sunday.  We put a lot of miles, kilometers, on the car today.

The temperature has been 42 degrees these last couple of days and I knew that it was hot but was a bit surprised when I got back to the internet to convert it, 107.6F.  Being so close to the bay of Kambath and the Arabian Sea it's a humid intense heat.