As on previous days, we had hired the driver from the hotel's tour agency to take us to various sites around Puri. Our first stop was around 90 minutes away in Dhauli, where we visited a Peace Pagoda, similar to the one we had seen outside Pokhara. Older Buddhist reliefs included in the modern structure were clearly more attractive than the modern statues placed on the four points of the compass, although one statue of a seated buddha was fairly elegant. Stone lions gazed out at the countryside below.
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| Peace pagoda (with mushrooms on top?) |
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| One of the older Buddhist friezes |
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| Still not feeling enlightened |
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| Lion and Maharashtran |
Just around the corner from the Peace Pagoda was a large rock on which one of the famous edicts of Ashoka, the great Buddhist Emperor of India, had been carved in the 3rd Century BC. Sadly (but necessarily, I suppose) the carving was protected by a glass-windowed building, which was unnecessarily ugly. An elephant, carved into rock above the edict, dated from the same period.
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| Text of the Ashokan edict, through the glass... |
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| ...of this particularly repulsive building. |
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| Posing with Ashoka's elephant |
Around half an hour later, we arrived at the site of the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves. There was the usual queue/mob in front of the kiosk to buy entrance tickets, but John managed to make his way through unharmed. As usual the tickets for foreigners were more than ten times the price of those for locals.
Hewn into the sandstone rock-face, the caves are thought to have been carved for Jain ascetics in the 1st century AD. We started our visit with Udayagiri. The site was fairly large and was separated by stone staircases into several distinct areas. Some of the rock-cut shelters were quite simple and were likely used as dormitories for the Jain ascetics (you can see the rock sloping up at one side of the niche to act as a pillow). Other caves were ornate with fine decorative carvings, some of which seemed to represent gods, and were probably used as temples. Some pathways had been set, but most people wandered around freely.
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| We could see why the Jain ascetics enjoyed these peaceful caves |
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| Monkeys enjoying the peace and quiet too |
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| Pausing before attempting the steps |
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| About to become an afternoon snack |
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| Looking across the road at the Khandagiri caves |
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| Rubbish tied to a tree; not evident why |
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| Very friendly monkeys |
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| Jain dormitories; note the incline serving as a very comfortable pillow |
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| John giving the elephant a cuddle in front of the temple to Ganesh |
There were fewer caves in Khandagiri, just across the road from Udayagiri, and they were not in a very good state apart from one larger cave that displayed carvings of numerous gods in three rows. A glass window had been set up to protect those carvings, which was clearly justified as some people had regrettably added their own graffiti to the other carvings around the site. However, the glass evidently had not been washed in a long time and it was not easy to see the statues. On top of the hill, we visited a more recent Jain temple, dating from the 18th century. From the top of Khandagiri, we had a great view over Bhubaneswar and could see the Lingaraj Mandir in the distance.
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| Carvings viewed through very murky glass |
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| Looking down at the Udayagiri caves from the Jain temple |
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| Jain Tirthankaras |
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| Another Tirthankara; we did not ring his bell |
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| The 18th century Jain temple |
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| Visitors adding their own contributions several centuries later |
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| A slightly freaky-looking baby monkey |
We dozed on the two-hour journey back to Puri, and then enjoyed a long lunch and a lazy afternoon and evening.
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