The Jain Temple

Sunday, January 6:

This morning we drove to the Adinath Jain temple about 50 miles west of Udaipur. Some of the road was great but there was much construction going on and it took a couple of hours to get there. This was time well spent since the temple is amazing. I would add it to the "must see" list for India. It is much smaller and not so impressive as the Taj from the outside but the inside is an amazing forest of beautiful marble pillars and celilings with very detailed carvings. It was also spotless.

On the way to the temple we saw several waterwheels being used to irrigate fields. We stopped at one to watch the proceedings and a gaggle of little girls came up hoping for a picture for a few rupees. The girls from the largest to the smallest all had earrings, a nose ring in the side of one nostril, and lots of sliver bracelets and anklets. The guide said they were clearly not the poorest of the poor with all that jewelry. We got our picture but how they managed to divy up the bank note is beyond me.

We also saw a tree full of these huge bats. I couldn't belive how big they were; they looked to be the size of large house cats.

As we approached the temple, a troop of monkeys was begging for food by the side of the road. They were very aggresive, a couple even jumping up on the hood of the car and not wanting to let us pass without some sort of toll. We also saw white ibis, cranes, sugar cane fields and eucalyptis trees (brought in from Australia like they did in California...what is it with importing these trees?)