Oh My Markanda

     So we finally managed to make it out for a day trip on Sunday. (Did I mention that we have 6 day work weeks here so Sunday is our only day off? I'm so excited for 2 day weekends again.) Our group consisted of 9 people, mostly interns, and we headed out after breakfast to Markanda, a nearby temple. I had been told that Markanda is old and is devoted to Shiva (a Hindu god). Little did I expect the astounding intricacies of stone carvings that Markanda is actually. Because pictures will probably better describe the trip -

Markanda had many smaller temples, here is one with a Shiva Linga (a symbol of Lord Shiva).

I saw this stair case the kind of leads up to a guard house looking structure (below) and just had to climb it.

Our little hideout - Not really, but it did provide us with great view of the whole temple.

An overview of the temple.

Then we wandered down the rocks towards the river where Venky proceeded to get in the water and swim around.

        Where we stopped for lunch on the way to another temple. It was definitely different from eating out in the US - the waiter basically kept bringing us food as we asked for it. Everyone (well not me and one other girl) was really glad to get non-veg food since the food at the mess is all vegetarian. The second temple we visited was much newer; the special thing about it was that it was built a the joining of three different rivers (I do not remember the names though :/).

     We took a boat ride (the boat guys were apparently doing this for "time pass"). They left us out on one of the island like places for about an hour so of course people got into the water and had some fun. There was no telling how sick I might get from the water so I resigned myself to being the photographer.This post is long overdue - but this time its not actually my fault! The internet has been super spacey/mostly absent this past week. More to come...