Badami caves

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This morning's drive was first along the fast road north heading to Bijapur. Men wereselling knives by the side of the road. The knives were curved in pirate style. An odd thing to see for sale as you drive past. On the quiter road to Badami the crops included peanuts and sunflowers. The harvesting of the peanuts seemed to involve pulling up the whole plant. We passed through a village where a festival hadtaken over the road. There was a huge amount of buying going on. This is a festival for the agricultural workers. The goods on offer included shiny new blue tractors. Toys, clothes, sunglasses, food snacks, and all sorts of household items were on sale. Not too different from a department store. There were also a couple of fairground rides and a dirty gypsy encampment nearby.

Badami is distinctive because of its sandstone cliffs. Unusually, there were pigs in the streets. We met our guide at the caves which are carved into the cliffs. Here monkeys were fighting over something, growling at each other. These caves date from around the same time as the Mahaliburapam caves and the art can be compared. These are from the chalukya empire C6 to C8. The first temple is dedicated to Shiva, the second and third to Vishnu and the fourth is a Jain temple. A particularly memorable image is one of the incarnations of Vishnu with his foot raised over the demon. The dwarf figures with their curly hair were also distinctive. The Indian tourist visiting the caves were very keen to have photos of me and Ginny, though I'm not sure why we were more interesting than the carvings and the natural patterns of the sandstone (or even the karma sutra carvings).

While climbing up to the caves we had a view down on the tank below. The tank is a large artificial pond. We saw it being used for washing clothes, pots and pans and buffaloes. The buffaloes looked clean and shiny when they emerged. I'm not so sure about the pots and pans. After the caves we walked round to the temple next to the tank, the bhutnath temple. This was very attractive in the evening light. The style of this temple was simple with only a few carvings.

The evening was quiet. There seem to be few guests here.

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