And Lightning Shall Strike you Down . . . .

If there is a long silence after this post it is because God may not have a sense of humor and has decided to do away with me via a swift lightning bolt . . . .

Like any catholic boy growing up I was very inattentive during mass and so I had to rely on story books to tell me about the saints and the apostles. And although there were stories of wild lions amazingly tamed, people living in the belly of a whales, great floods and destruction and even an odd dragon here and there (St George) I wasn't mesmerized by any of the stories. Maybe it's because after everything was said and done, the characters ended up turning the other cheek and that was the end of the story.

In India however, I was introduced to a religion that, although still made a point to recognize good versus evil, had no qualms about keeping death and destruction within the story lines and did not apologize about it afterward. I am of course talking about Hinduism, a religion with over 330,000 deities in it, all unique and interesting. How can you beat a title like "Shiva the Destroyer" or "Vishnu the Preserver" and "Brahma the Creator". We on the other hand grew up with "Thomas the Doubter" and "Job".

I guess it helps that Hinduism predates Islam, Christianity and Buddhism by a few thousand years, back when people's minds were more focused on staying alive rather than being nice to each other.

In any case, the temples I visited and the superbly knowledgeable guides laid out the splendor of this religion. Panel after panel showed one deity in battle with another, how one warrior magically transformed his one arrow into thousands (with a clear depiction of his adversary getting hit) and how one god dances in the open belly of an elephant (it was after all a bad elephant). My favorite one though shows Narasimha, a half man half lion god with his victim (needless to say a bad guy) sprawled face up across the god's knee. His stomach is ripped open and the god, which happens to have anything from 4 to 10 arms (depending which sect you believe in), has the poor victim's intestines (yes intestines) coming out from the stomach to the outstretched arms. Unfortunately, due to the ravages of time and the delicate nature of . . . intestines, not all the statues actually show this as they have been damaged. Still pretty graphic if you ask me, what with the fingers still dipped inside the stomach and, in a tip to the ancient artist, look at the detail of his right most hand, how it digs into the guys knee. These pictures show Halebid and Belur temples in India's Karnataka State.

Okay, time for me to repent now . . . .

Hot Chili

Crossing over from the East to the West of China we undoubtedly had a lot of Chinese food. Although there were some regional specialities, anything hot and spicy was always a favorite of mine. It wasn't "burn your tastebuds off with a firethrower" spicy (although I had one stick of bbq chicken which did just that) but more of a nice warm, sometimes hot flavor that enhanced the dishes.

Driving out of Turfan it seemed we had hit the origin of all the spicy chilies in China. Made my mouth water as we drove past these red fields.

Playing Chess

In Tashkent, Uzbekistan, there is a plaza for Tamerlane the great 14th century conqueror of most of central Asia. At the height of power, his empire spanned from most of Eurasia to Delhi and Moscow, from the Tien Shan Mountains to the Taurus Mountains. Not surprisingly, he was an avid chess player.

Nowadays, as the sun sets, people gather around the plaza and set up chess boards. Strangers come to watch and if bold enough challenge players. I think I saw money change hands at one of the games but one can tell by the faces of these old timers and even some of the young newcomers, they don't play for money. They play for the bragging rights. All under the watchful eye of Tamerlane.

Justification

Relevant to my earlier post, about shooting stuff that's been shot a million times over, I bumped into a blog about a photographer that had a similar experience.  His rationalization was cosmically similar to mine. . . . everyone has that shot, except for me.  Read about it here.

First Look - Taj Mahal

Just a quick post.  This is the first full picture I took of the Taj Mahal and I'm pretty happy with it.  The problem you have with photographing any famous landmark (and I'm pretty sure this must be India's most famous) is how do you take an original shot that hasn't been taken before?  Looking through google's images I didn't see any similar photos but on Flickr you can see a lot of people had the same or similar shots.  Oh well, at least this one is mine.

Jaipur Milk Market

Everyone knows that cows are sacred in India. They are left to roam on their own with the owners safe in the belief that no one would dare steal, kill or eat their sacred animal. So it begs the question, what do all these free roaming cows do for their owners?

Well, like cows all over the world, they provide milk, and on our way to the Amber Fort we stopped by a milk market. Here, people buy and sell the fresh milk provided by these animals. I expect that a lot has remained unchanged. Except for the stainless steal containers people basically still go about the business the same way. They talk quantity, they talk price, they check out the merchandise (which involves dipping your hand in the container and "feeling" the creaminess) and then they shake hands. Go back 50, 100 maybe 500 hundred years back or more and I expect that's how they did it back then.