I can’t say I had particularly high expectations about the Confucius Temple when I visited it. Indeed, I only went there because it happened to be very close to the nearby Lama Temple (Yonghegong), and I thought I might as well take a look because I was in the area.

But after stepping through its entrance, I found myself entranced by the quiet and dignified beauty of the place, with its attractive courtyards and pavilions, the groves of fine old cypress trees, the long lines of stone tablets listing the names of the candidates who had successfully passed the advanced Jinshi examination during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and the stone stele pavilions commemorating various imperial triumphs.

It wasn’t as if any of these items were particularly impressive on their own, but together they formed a wonderfully harmonious whole that neatly encapsulated many of the key elements of Chinese culture and tradition: the rich aesthetics of its architecture, the reverence for education, and the respect for family as the pillar of social stability embodied in the ancient sage’s teachings.

About 50km south of Bangalore just off the busy Mysore highway lies the small town of Ramanagara, which is also known as the land of the seven hills thanks to seven monolithic granite outcrops that stand above the surrounding landscape as if guarding the nearby fields and houses of the local people.

Although not particularly tall, the hills add a certain stark grandeur to the scene as we make our way through the somnolent village enjoying the crisp air of the early morning.

Introduction

Life and death; joy and suffering; mystical tranquility and gritty reality; sacred riches and earthly poverty. No other city provides a starker set of contrasts than Varanasi.

This should not come as any big surprise, perhaps, for Varanasi is not only the oldest living city in the world with an unbroken history of over 3,000 years, but also the holiest city in all of India lying on the banks of the country’s most sacred river.

Introduction

The village of Begur is only around 25 kilometers outside of the bustling modernity of Bangalore, but when you visit the ancient Naganatheshwara and Kashi Vishwanatha temples there you feel like you could be a thousand miles away as you are transported back to another time and place in history.

Introduction

Fort is a hopelessly inadequate word to capture the rich historical grandeur of the complex of palaces, temples, water tanks, and battlements that stand on the top of the sheer cliffs of the rocky massif that dominates the flat plains of Gwalior and the surrounding area.

Citadel is probably a better word, for it was on the top of this hill that successive generations of Rajput, Muslim, Maratha, and, most recently, British rulers built their fortifications, housed their courts and harems, and made their religious devotions.

What is there to say or to write about the Taj Mahal that hasn’t already been said or written? This is, after all, one the most beautiful buildings in the world and a universal symbol of the power of love – at least if you are willing to ignore its contradictions.

So let’s start with the bare facts about the Taj. It was built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his second wife, Mumtaz Hahal, who died during the birth of her fourteenth child in 1631 leaving the emperor heartbroken.

Just before reaching Agra, we stopped off at the town of Sikandra to see the mausoleum of Akbar, who is widely regarded as the greatest of all the Mughal emperors. He was also quite an eclectic one, too, who sought to try and synthesize key elements of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, and Christianity into a single religious philosophy called Deen Ilahi that he developed.

This eclecticism is reflected in the riot of different architectural styles and motifs that you find in the mausoleum, the construction of which was begun by Akbar in 1605 and completed after his death by his son Jehangir in 1613.

It’s 204km from Delhi to Agra, but even though a fairly decent two-lane highway has been built between the two cities it still takes about five hours to get there thanks to all the bullock- and horse-drawn carts and tractors trundling merrily along the road, their drivers oblivious to the faster vehicles noisily honking their horns behind them, and the numerous busy villages and small towns you have to pass through.

Even though we set out early at around 7:00am on a Sunday morning, the highway was already filling up with traffic and we made slow and at times bumpy progress through crowded village markets until reaching a rather magnificently appointed emporium after about two and a half hours. Inside, the place was full of shops selling all type of Indian handicrafts and other tourist tat and I cynically wondered how much our driver was being paid for stopping there; quite clearly, it did great business with foreign tourists on their way to Agra.

Just around the corner from the Soolai Bazaar, we came to the Chakratirtha, the most sacred bathing spot on the Tungabhadra River because it is believed that this is where Shiva gave Vishnu one of his most powerful weapons, the Chakra – a sharp spinning discus-like implement.  

Waiting for us at the end of Hampi Bazaar was a huge monolithic statue of the bull Nandi housed in a twin-storied mandapa (pavilion) with a heap of huge boulders behind it. Known locally as Yeduru Basavanna, this was carved out of the rock and although fairly primitive in style has an imposing presence about it.

Sadly, like so many other religious monuments in Hampi, this statue of Nandi has been desecrated, but it still gazes towards the Virupaksha Temple nearly a kilometer away as if carefully watching over the safety of the shrine to his Lord Shiva that is housed there.