India trip 2005

[miltan]

Finally, in a fit of non-procrastination, I have put up the photos from our India trip. They're not sorted yet, so there are just 450+ of them in one large directory. I hope to get them all sorted into sub-albums this afternoon some time. Until then, check them out here.
View this post on my blog

Comments

[ericflee]

cool milind! I liked your pics of your 'cruise'/playground in surya shibir. I was curious about a couple of things though.. were all of those really nice stone structures in sri lanka buddhist wats (i think that is what they are called in se asia)? And what were all of the old stone carvings of elephants in chennai all about? And why is madras called chennai now (i looked up where chennai was)? Is it the old name before the british came?

[miltan]

In order:
1) I'm not quite sure which structures you are referring to. Most of them were actually palaces and the like, with the only expressly Buddhist structures being the statues.
2) The elephant carvings are from a place called Mahabalipuram, which is a little bit south of Chennai. They're part of a whole set of archaeological ruins left there from, umm, 700 AD? Something like that. All the stuff (other than the lighthouse) in those pictures are ruins from that period.
3) Indians went through a whole fit of name changing over the last ten years. Bombay became Mumbai, Calcutta became Kolkata and Madras became Chennai, for example. In Madras's case, it wasn't much of a city until the imperial period, but Chennai was the name of a small town located in roughly the same place. So I guess they decided a slightly inaccurate name was preferable to a colonial one :-).

[iamkirinlemon]

Awesome, you went to Mahabalipuram ... one of the few sites I actually have been to in India. I'll take a look at these photos when I get back. I want to give them the requisite amount of staring-time.

[plazdator]

what are you doing? Let’s chat Go Here dld.bz/chwZG