Hi Hivers,
During my orisha trip we visited konark temple. Konark is a 'Unesco World Heritage Monument'. This is one of very few temples across the globe dedicated to Surya, The Sun God.
Konark temple is located on coast line at around 30-35 km from Puri city. We left our hotel in morning around 9:00 AM and it took almost 1-30 hour to reach here. The actual time from puri to konark is almost half but we took a break midway. The road from Puri to Konark is all along the coast line and so the journey in itself was so refreshing and mesmerizing. There are a no of hotels, resorts, camps on the way and I was thinking it would have been better choosing our stay in one such place.
Konark is a magnificent architecture built in around 13th century. It represents a huge chariot of God Sun. It has 24 wheels in pair 12 pair of wheels representing 12 months of the year. Each wheel has 8 Spokes which represents 8 Pahar of the day. A 'Pahar' in indian culture is almost 3 hours time, and so the whole day is divided in 8 Pahar's. There are also 7 stone horses in the architecture to represent pulling of the Sun's chariot.
The temple is presently not in very good condition. It feels like ruins of a magnificent, engineering marvel. The main temple section was being repaired and so was closed. This is one of very popular and most visited tourist attraction of India and specially Odisha.
On the walls temple has some very sensual carvings, some scenes from the Hindu mythology and other life activities. The exquisite carvings are one of major attraction here and it depicts the culture and philosophy of the time when this temple was built.
One major attraction of the place is 'Sound and Light Show' which happens in the evening, we couldn't watch it as we had to leave early, but I can tell that it would definitely be a great 'Sound and Light Show' as I have seen sound and light shows at some different such monumental places in India.
There is also a 'Nav Graha' temple here, dedicated to the Nine Planets of the solar system. On the way back we spent some time at konark beach.
Thanks for reading all through it.
Keep reading, keep posting.
