Junagadh and Somnath

After the adventure to Pavagadh with the Brazilians, I decided it was time to strike out on my own again and visit somewhere in Gujarat. I decided on Junagadh - a fairly central location in Western Gujarat that would give me easy access to a few other towns nearby.

I decided to camp at the BAPS Mandir in Junagadh. After catching a state transport bus for the 9 hour ride to Junagadh (bad idea), I found myself at the mandir with only the name of the head sadhu there. Yet within 15 minutes, I had a place to bathe, sleep, and eat for the next three days. I love this Swaminarayan network. I've never met ANYONE there before, but all might as well have known each other for years. They were kind enough to give me a free place to stay and free food too.

The day I arrived I headed out to visit the town of Junagadh - and in particular Uperkot Fort and the old Swaminarayan Temple. The fort was fairly interesting, but my favorite spots were the Navghan Kund - one of the first step wells ever built (11th century). It's transverse steps down to the bottom were really eerie and seemed to go on forever. There were also some buddhist caves whose pillars got more intricate the further down into the cave system you went. But my favorite was the Jama Masjid inside the fort. Though used as a mosque, its artisans were Hindu and so filled the mosque with Hindu symbols. In fact the mihrabs (nooks facing Mecca) were so intricately carved, they could well be the inner sanctum of a temple if there was a murti inside. The carvers had even managed to include animals like elephants, flowers like the lotus, and bells. They had even carved the back wall of the mihrab where the idol would be. I guess that was their way of snubbing their noses at their Muslim overlords...

Later I walked into the old city center to the Swaminarayan Temple where Gunatitanand Swami was the head sadhu for over forty years. It's a beautifully crafted and painted temple. I found out after I came back from the visit that, in order to appease the muslim nawab (governer) of Junagadh, Lord Swaminarayan built a small mosque into the top of one of the spires. A zoomed-in look at the picture of the spires that I took confirmed it. How incredibly insightful of Swaminarayan... and odd...

The next day I caught a Rs. 35/- sharebus (the kind that are packed to the brim and usually have people hanging out the door) to Veraval to visit the Somnath Temple. As I walked toward the temple, an old man offered me a tour of all "tirths" (sacred places) in and around Somnath in his horse-pulled cart. We settled on Rs. 30/- and off we went. We visited many temples. Sooo many temples. There's seriously an infinite number of them in India. The trick is finding out which ones are worth visiting and which ones aren't. I have a mental idea of what that criteria is but I can't express it quite yet. One of the temples - to Hinglaj Mataji, is reached by crawling backward down an incredibly narrow (and long) set of stairs. I'm glad I'm not claustrophobic. I'm so used to Murtis that are intricately carved and incredibly lifelike that when I see one that looks like someone pasted a large pair of googly-eyes on the wall and painted a head-shape around it, I'm not sure whether to take the experience seriously or not. I'm trying to figure out currently what the background for that murti design style is. The priests at the temples said that the Pandavas (from the Mahabharat) spent time in these caves and were responsible for the construction of these temples. They look waaay too new to be over 5000 years old. A few other not-so-memorable stops completed the hour-and-a-half tour. The highlight, of course, was the magnificent Somnath Mandir.

Dedicated to Someshwar Mahadev (Lord of the Moon), the "idol" is one of twelve Jyotirlinga around India. The temple is HUGE and is really something amazing to look at. And it has an incredible history. It's been destroyed and rebuilt time and time again. Mahmud of Ghazni sacked the first one in 1021 A.D. and Aurangzeb had a go at a later version. The version today was built only in 1950, but a lot of research into what the older Somnath Temples may have looked like went into this one's construction. I'm not sure what it is with Moghul's and knocking down Hindu temples. The coolest part about this temple though is that it's administered by the state government. Considering that India strives to be secular, this seems counterintuitive. But amazingly enough, the state government hires real, trained, brahmins to administer to the temple. They don't even ask you for money, but they have a list of pujas that you can take part in if you leave a donation. Different pujas have different prices - I still find it odd to pay for a prayer. It'd make sense if the donation were optional, but it's not... But I was interested in seeing if these Brahmins at Somnath knew what they were doing. I knew what proper puja's should sound like, what kind of verses should be recited (since I know most of them now). And Somnath's holy men passed my test with flying colors. They were on the money from the opening invocation to the closing Ganpati stotra. In fact, they were so knowledgeable, when he asked who my "ishtadev" was (to which I replied Swaminarayan), he asked which sect I belonged to (I replied BAPS), to which he continued the puja by invoking not just Shiva, but also Swaminarayan and the entire succession of gurus of BAPS. But I really liked that the priest asked the participant to keep in mind his own personal deity, not just Someshwar Mahadev. And they worked hard to create an environment of worship and devotion. A very organized, hassle-free, and spiritually sound experience. I returned to Junagadh, stopping enroute at Bhalka Tirth, where Krishna's foot is believed to have been pierced by an arrow, ending the era of Krishna-avatar.

Next I climbed Girnar.