Mt Abu...Marble dreams, Mystic views and Hindu language tours

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Hey Guys,
Well we survived a nice Indian bus ride all the way to the top of Mt. Abu! It actually wasn't that bad although we were a little leary at first looking at the side of the bus and seeing nice puke spray stains from every window. Good news for us our seats were in the very front! So we arrived in Mt. Abu which is really nice, we were somewhat worried since we always just show up without pre-booking any accommodation and we heard that with Diwali just around the corner we might be SOL but we managed to find a good place for a whopping $7/night.

We decided the easiest and cheapest way to see the sights was with a tour so we signed up for the Government Tourist office special. The tour cost us $2 which was good, the tour was in Hindu which was not so good. So just enjoy the pictures of the Temples and don't ask to many questions! Our guidebook was able to provide us with as much info as we needed, and viewpoints and most temples are pretty self explanatory anyways. What surprised us again was the high volume of Indian tourists and the complete lack of westerners. We were the only ones at every site we visited until the last Temple.

The temples were all really nice although a few included some huge climbs to reach but were worth the visit. The last temple we visited was the Jain Dilwara Temples, the Temples are absolutely incredible with the level of detail in the marble carvings. One temple had 2500 artisans working for over 15 years to complete the work. Many artisans were paid based on the amount of dust they created from their carvings. Unfortunately no photography was allowed so check out this link for a few pics http://www.templenet.com/abu.html

Other stops on the tour took us to some really nice view points such as Honeymoon Point and Sunset Point but the haze/smog really cut down on the views unfortunately. Sunset Point was our last stop and there had to well over 10,000 Indian tourists there, it was crazy. We also kept running into the same tour groups all day which was funny since I had a group of 3 guys run up and shake my hand every time we saw them, Tyne had an Indian family throw their baby daughter in her arms so they could take her picture and we also had a group of 20 followers from a school group tour! It's weird hearing your name called in the middle of India.

The rest of our time in Mt. Abu was spend just relaxing and exploring a nice quiet mountain town. The one thing we noticed was every restaurant was vegetarian, we couldn't get a piece of chicken anywhere! Our adventures in India are definitely much better the less time we spend in major urban areas.


So until the next one

Cheers,

Matt & Tyne

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Photos

Final product
A single piece of marble

Temple on the mountain
It's a long climb up, believe us!

Comments

[Simon]

Who's that guy?
Tyne, Who's that skinny guy your with? Matt must be all that hot weather and hiking! Looks like you guys are still having a awsome time. Simon.