Shravanabelgola

I caught two buses to Shravanabelgola, passing through dry, scrubby, uninspiring countryside. During the last part of the journey a young man from Chennai sat with me and lectured me on the chakras. He also told me the story behind the statue that we were going to see. It involved a lot of fighting between two brothers, both of whom now have temples dedicated to them on the tops of two hills facing each other. The statue we went to see is enormous, a naked standing man, seventeen and a half metres high, carved out of a single piece of rock at the top of a huge round rocky hill. Vines grow up the legs and arms of the statue, to show how long he has been standing, meditating, for he was a Jain, and Jains always meditated naked and standing. There are small jain statues all round the cloister that encircles the central courtyard, where the big statue is. Many of these small statues have very narrow waists, broad hips and thighs and broad shoulders, suggestive of hermaphroditism.

To reach the statue you must climb six hundred and fourteen steps up a steep hill, with bare feet. Porters carry the unfit and the fat in sedan chairs up to the top. Hundreds of Indian pilgrims climb the steps, a few sit and meditate around the enclosure at the top. Others make offerings. Priests ring bells and perform ceremonies continuously. I guess they are paid to do this. This statue is sacred to Hindus although it is a Jain statue.

As I came down the steps the sun was heating up the stone and I was glad to put my sandals back on. I enjoyed a nice thali in a pure vegetarian hotel (as they call restaurants in India), then walked along the road watching the pilgrims climb the steep slope, like a line of ants crawling over a boulder. I was happy that I had made the climb in the morning.