The curious one..

Outside the caves there are plenty of monkeys prancing around soliciting food and even water. If you look closely you will see a bottle of water on the tree!

Carvings

More carvings in the Elephanta Caves off the Mumbai coast

Carvings

More carvings inside the Elephanta Caves off the coast of Mumbai

Numbers - Theme Day

This is a picture of the Ghanteshwar temple in Khar - a suburb of Mumbai. This temple has a very interesting story which I shall reveal in later posts.
'Established 1960' is written in the Devanagiri script. This script is used to write in 'Hindi' and 'Marathi' languages - Hindi is the national language of India and Marathi is the State language of Maharashtra which celebrates its birth today!
The group of letters on the left reads established and the group of numbers on the right reads 1960 and refers to the establishment of the temple.

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Sculpture

A sculpture at the entrance to one of the caves in Elephanta off the Mumbai coast

Shivalingam

The Shivalingam is enshrined in a cave within the main cave in Elephanta off the Mumbai coast. The Shivalingam denotes the primeval energy of the Creator. For further details on the Shivalingam click on http://www.templenet.com/beliefs/shivling.htm

Elephanta caves

Another entrance to another set of caves at the Elephanta!

Mahesh murti

The central recess holds the most famous and remarkable sculpture of this period known as the Mahesh-murti. It is a colossal bust of the three forms of Siva, the aghora, turbulent and fearsome; tatpurusha, benign and meditative and vamadeva, mild pleasing and lovable.