My travels: Day 11 (Apr-22) : Konark and Bhubneswar

We left Puri and went directly to Konark. The temple was a superb building. The older, bigger temple was said to have a magnet. It would hold the temple together and also allow the iron idol of the sun god to levitate in the air. This magnet however would distract the ships from its original path. Hence, the British not realizing the value of the magnet, removed it. The temple tumbled down soon afterwards. The inside of the smaller temple to has been closed due to the problem of falling stones. The intricate designs on the temple are unparalleled. The clear beauty, geometry and astrology of the temple amazed me. Just imagine, in the 16^th century, when the magnet was still there, how the temple would look. In a dark hallway of many intricate carvings, right in the centre is an idol suspended in air, the rays of the sun falling directly on the idol. The sun’s light falls on one idol in the morning on another in the evening and on a third during sunset. The wheels of the temple are sundials using which we can tell the time with accuracy of three minutes. Our guide was also an interesting fellow, he was aged 84 years.

We then visited the Lingaraja temple. It too had the characteristics of a Orison temple. However, it was much better preserved than the Konark temple as it was further away from the sea.

I have been a complete fool! In my hurry, I deleted all my photos from Konark. It included an angle experiment, and the photo of our 84 year old guide. Papa has a photo of the guide from the back. A pity.

We then went to Bhubaneshwar. We went straight to the Nandankanan Zoological Park. We saw tigers, leopards and all the big cats. The typical big striped house cats you see in a zoo. The real things in the wild have a completely different atmosphere. However, I dragged my parents to that place to see if they had any new animal I didn’t know. To help my G.K :)