Yuku free message boards

KANCHIPURAM
One of the seven Sacred Cities of India,
6th Century Hindu temples.

The chain was carved out of solid stone.




Shore Temple 8th Century








Boat


ROCK TEMPLE MAMALLAPURAM 8th Century



Look at the mother lovingly licking her calf.




BANGALORE
City Hall


Chennakesava Temple 1116AD 
Believe it or not, I have left out a lot of temples but the art was exquisite! 
These photos remind me of how bad my old film camera was at capturing blue skies.

















I loved the flowers in the women's hair









Sacred cow in a chariot


"Temporary" shelters for Tzunami homeless victims.


MYSORE
Palace










NANDI BULL Chamundi Hill






A country market






My favourite photo


OOTACAMUND
The Savoy Hotel.  Known during the Raj as "Snooty Ooty".


Tea plantations


Ooops!




Cocoa

Rubber


Coffee in the foreground and pepper behind


COCHIN
Synagogue  dating to 8th Century




Fishing nets and boats








KARALA with its beautiful tropical waterways








A little private enterprise here, despite the fact that Karela is the only communist area of India.
The man had put a bamboo pole across the waterway and demanded money to let us pass.




ALLEPPEY






A brickworks


School uniforms


MEENAKSHI TEMPLE MADURAI 1636
This was an amazing, crowded major pilgrimage site




Elephant giving blessings




Ceiling




Wedding




Carpet shop

We went there in May 2001 and it was very cold indeed.We needed wind-proof ski wear and plenty of layers underneath. 
Life used to be very hard indeed. Our guide told us that her grandmother had said the greatest advance in her lifetime had been rubber boots, to have dry feet in winter! 
The whole island is volcanic and much of it is impenetrable, jagged lava that cannot be crossed by any means.  Frequent volcanic eruptions often almost decimated the population.
Almost the only food they had in the past was air-dried cod as they had no fuel. The Vikings cut down  the few straggly trees there had been and none have grown since so they have no wood or even peat.
The only outdoor crop that can be grown in a few places in the south, is grass which is stored for the winter to feed the animals.  Everything has to be imported but they are now self-sufficient in fruit, vegetables and flowers, grown under glass.
The only limitless resource they have is geo-thermal energy with loads of hot water and cheap electricity. Everything is heated by natural hot water pumped round the island.
The language, like the people and the ponies is pure Viking.
The 300,000 population was the richest in the world, having really developed since independence from Denmark but last year came the world economic crash which destroyed their Financial Services economy and they are now in grave trouble. Strangely when we used to ask what their great wealth was based on, they just said fishing and smelting imported aluminium ore, which never seemed an adequate explanation at the time.

REYKJAVIC  The Capital





A typical corrugated iron house


Hallgrimskirja  The Cathedral with the statue of Leifur Erikson, the son of Eric the Red, who discovered America, at least as far as Europeans were concerned, long before Columbus. The first Viking to reach Iceland was Naddodur and they are proud of the fact that the Vikings had an elected  parliament long before any other Europeans, 1,000 years ago.






Hveragerdi geo-thermal hot springs


Demonstrating the pressure in the pipes.


Thingvellir National Park with the Prime Minister's country house




Geysers






Gulfuse waterfall




Seljalandsfoss  The car in front was being photographed for an advert.  I have seen many car adverts with this particular waterfall as the back-drop.


A fishing village


Viking ponies.  No horse can be imported and if any leaves it cannot be returned to ensure the stock remains pure.


The Folk Museum at Skogar founded and maintained as a labour of love to preserve the history of the traditional way of life by an elderly man now in his eighties.






Here he is.


Stykkisholmur  We enjoyed the wonderfully warm ( cooled artificially as the water would have been too hot in its natural state) open-air swimming pool in this village but it was freezing cold getting in and out.

Midnight.

The village church








Glacier of Solheimajokull










On the boat, they dropped a dredging fishing net, hauled it up and emptied it onto a metal table, served wine and everyone ( except me) tucked in to the raw, hardly dead contents. My husband said it was delicious and pushed a piece of wet, cold, salty rubber into my mouth. Obviously a previously unknown definition of the word, delicious!








REYKHOLT  Birthplace of Snorri.


Snorri, ah Snorri.  He was quite a lady's man by all accounts and managed to marry the richest woman in Iceland and become the leading politician of his day. 
Snorri's main claim to fame however was that he was responsible for writing down and preserving the Viking Icelandic Sagas which would otherwise have been lost. 
Curiously the Icelanders forgot about the benefits of hot water baths for centuries but they were obviously appreciated in the 13th century.
Sadly Snorri was murdered whilst soaking in his bath (below) in 1241. 

Djuparlonssandur
Amazing crystaline rock




A Viking monument


Volcanic crater


Hellnar  A strange but charming village occupied by people who had partially cut themselves off from the rest of society and believed they are living on strange mystic lay-lines in the earth and they take one underground into a cave to climb up a natural chimney and emerge reborn.  Hmmm.


A statue of a troll.
Trolls are very real ( apparently) and roads have been diverted and buildings moved so as not to disturb their underground lairs!

Annastapi
Note the three trolls in the forefround.


Djuparlonssandur






A Viking road 1,000 years old.


Snaelpellsjokull, Jules Verne's Entrance to the Centre of the World.


The Blue Lagoon spa. A wonderful place to swim surrounded by steam.