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Thane > Surat > Baroda > Anand > Tarapur > Lothal > Bhavnagar > Shatrunjaya (Palitana) > Diu > Somnath > Gir Sanctuary (Lions) > Junagadh - Porbandar - Dwarka - Jamnagar - Rajkot - Vadodara - Thane
Shatrunjeya - Palitana
The temple at the bottom of the hill where the climb starts
The 3000 steps of walkway to top
A 2-man "Doli" carrying a pilgrim
Intermediate point Mandap
Last few steps and main entrance
30th August 2005 : Day-3 >> Bhavnagar - Palitana - Talaja Mahuva (136 km)
Left from Bhavnagar hotel after breakfast at 8:45AM driving to Palitana, a bustling town where there is a hill called Sahtrunjeya, on top of which the there are 863 Jain Temples. I reached here 10:30 am. This is Jainism's holiest pilgrimage place i India. These temples were built over 900 years ago and the whole hill is full of their spires and domes. This hill is entirely dedicated to th Gods and is deserted at night, when eevn the priests depart. There is nice laid out pavement of steps and graded slopes to climb up to the top of the hill with many temples on the way and on top. I took 2 hours to climb the 600M hill with 3000 steps to reach the top. It sun was hot by the time I arrived.
Shatrunjeya temple at the plains level
The first of the marbel Jain temple ... in a real clean setting!
White marble temples ........... one of the hundreds!
One of the wow temples!
A finely sculpted and intricate toran archway at entrance
Another finely sculpted Shatrunjeya temple
View on way down from Palitana's Shatrunjaya Hill
I finished seeing the amazingly neat and clean temples on Satrunjaya by 1:00pm and climbed down in another 1.5 hrs and started off towards Talaja by 2:30pm.
At Talalja stopped for lunch at a Dhaba and continued on to Mahuva.
At Mahuva stayed in a small Hotel Sunlight at Rs 100/-. It was hot at night could barely sleep and hardly slept after 3:00 am. Wished I had searched for an AC-room hotel.
Tomorrow I plan to go on to Diu, a Union Territory on the sea coast (but not in Gujarat).
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