Out of ‘town’
Mallory and I took a short stroll out of ‘town’, from the main street with all the shops into the old part of the village, with a few houses and then mostly fields with cows, pigs and other animals, roaming around freely. We passed a temple where a concert was held, talked to a couple […] Read More
Erotic Khajuraho
The reason to come to Khajuraho are its Hindu and Jain temples. Most temples were built some time between 950 and 1050, during the Chandella dynasty. Records suggest that there were once 85 temples, but only about 20 survived the Muslim raids and conquests, and the vegetation growing over them for centuries. What makes them […] Read More
Khajuraho
It took some time to remember the name of the place. Kha-ju-ra-ho. Funnily, even Indians sometimes shrug when I say it – or maybe I am mispronouncing it so badly that they can’t understand me. It’s a tiny nest of some 20 000 inhabitants, in the Chhatarpur District, in the North of the Indian State of Madhya […] Read More
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo
India is the birthplace of Buddhism, so I am running into Buddha over and over again. One of the holy sites in Buddhism is just a bit north of Varanasi, in Sarnath. It was here, near the confluence of the Ganges and the Gomati rivers, where Buddha first taught the Dharma. Today, it is a holy site to Buddhists, with many temples from all […] Read More
Elephanta
As every guide book recommended it, I could just not NOT do it… a day trip to Elephanta Island, and the temples that have been carved into the rocks. It’s a nice one-hour boat trip from Mumbai, the boats leave every ten minutes from the Gateway of India. It seems like a tourist destination, though […] Read More
Sunset at Wat Arun
The Temple of Dawn, or, by its full Thai name Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchawaramahawihan is a Buddhist temple – a wat – on the Thonburi bank of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. It’s probably Bangkok’s most photographed sight, and I had to go there, too. I first wanted to see all major temples and the […] Read More
Wat Pho
Despite the heat and the incredible humidity, I went on a little sightseeing trip, up the river to Wat Pho, a buddhist temple next to the royal palace, famous for its huge reclining Buddha. Once I got through to the massive reclining Buddha along with dozens of other tourists, the groups dispersed in the wide area […] Read More
The temple of A-Ma
On the southern tip of the peninsula, built onto and into a rock formation, you’ll find the Temple of A-Ma, which supposedly gave Macau its name (as the Portuguese tried to enunciate the sound of the name of the place). It is one of the oldest Taoist temples in Macau, built in 1488, and it […] Read More
Templo mayor
I have seen the ruins of the Templo Mayor, the main Aztec temple of Tenochtitlan, from the side of the Cathedral three weeks ago, but as it was late in the day, the museum was already closed. It didn’t look that big, so I thought I could make a quick visit, walk through the ruins and then […] Read More
Miyajima Island
After the sad first day in Hiroshima, I needed something uplifting. A trip to nearby Miyajima Island, best known for its floating torii gate at the entrance to the Itsukushima Shrine. The torii is the traditional Japanese gate usually found at the entrance of a Shinto shrine This one is special though, and it might easily be one of the most […] Read More