India Day Two

Originally written on 2015-10-30

This morning we went to the Delhi Akshardham, depending on who you talk to it is either the largest or second largest Hindu temple in India. It is a huge compound with many features, but we confined ourselves to visiting the central court and the temple itself. It is built entirely out of pink Indian Sandstone and Italian Marble, even though India has some of the finest and hardest marble in the world they imported Italian marble. The temple is 141 feet tall, 316 feet wide and 356 feet long. It has no steel or concrete and is totally built from sandstone and marble. It is covered with carvings of Hindu deities and animals and took from 2000 until 2005 to complete and employed 7000 artisan carvers to do the religious carvings. 

Built by an offshoot of the Hindu religion, it cost millions and our guide thinks that it is hardly ever used for worship but mainly as a tourist showplace.

Travelling between Delhi and Agra, our next point of interest, was a four hour drive through farm land and farm villages. Shades of 1960, when I was growing up and Dad and the neighbours cut grain with a binder and we then field stooked and threshed with a threshing machine. Well here, and we drove past miles and miles of small family wheat fields, they cut the grain with a hand sickle, tie it into sheaves with wheat straw, stook it and then take to a central place for threshing. The threshing is done by beating the grain over a log and then use a hand sieve to separate the grain from the chaff. Wow! 

There are dozens and dozens of small brick factories along the road where everything is done by hand. They are allowed to take up to three feet of top soil and under pan to make bricks with. Once that soil has been removed, the farmers move in and till the bottom of the pits, flood them and start a farm crop of some kind. I guess the soil quality is all the same.

Villages are manic, full of people, motorized transport, animal transport and livestock.

If you stop, you are treated nicely, although you  are a novelty and get stared at by lots. Staring is not a bad thing in their culture, just shows curiosity, although teenage boys and young men can be rude.  The men dress pretty plain, but the women dress in very colourful and beautiful saris and dresses. 

We went out and watched a Bollywood type theatre show in the evening. The show was the story of Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal. It is the story behind the building of the Taj Mahal, which has got to be the most impressive place I have seen.