Jain Temples, Mount Abu

This is day one of week seven, I can't believe we have been away from home for so long. The time is flying by!

Yesterday we traveled by by train, 3 A/C (three bunks , one above each other, in an air conditioned carriage) train was not very full, it started from Amhedabad at 9,30 and got to its final destination, Delhi many hours later. It took till 3.20 to get to Abu Road only a couple of hundred K from A'bad. We rocked gently along, sometimes looking out of the window at life in the villages and fields, sometimes sleeping like the rest of the passengers. Indians seem to be really good at sleeping - on trains or almost anywhere else they seem to be able to take their ease.

Once we got to Abu Road we found a taxi to take us up to Mount Abu, about 45 mins up a huge lump of rock that just errupts out of the plain. We are staying at the Kishangarh House , the former summer residence of the Mahararaja of Kishangarh. It is very pretty and very quiet, there were only three of us in the hotel last night. Brian and I had our dinner about 7.30, in the large, gloomily lit dinning room, watched closely by the waiter who rushed forward as each dish was emptied. Slightly un-nerving but you couldn't fault him on polite and prompt service.

When we finished eating we read for a bit in the very attractively decorated sitting room, sitting on one of the many red covered sofas. The room and adjoining corridor are decorated with assorted princely photos of wonderfully dressed family groups, there are also large brass elephants and a range of decorative items like teapots and such.

We slept well after the lovely hot shower, I was warm enough but Brian could have done with another blanket, its much cooler up here at night. Today breakfast in the sunny courtyard and then a walk round the very pretty lake, followed by coffee and a cake (a rare indulgence). After that a jeep up to the Temple complex at Delwara.

If any of you reading this ever come to India these temples are not to be missed, the carving is the most beautiful and the most detailed I have ever seen. The stone is mostly white marble and honestly some of the carving looks more like piped sugar paste than stone. The workers were paid by the amount of dust they collected, so I guess it was in their interest to carve in the most tiny detail they could manage. Just fantastic and glowing in the noon day sun. There were loads of people being shown round, but only two other Europeans that I saw. It is a pilgrimage site of great importance to Hindus and the temples are of the Jain sect.

Tessa