The city of Kashi is filled with temples, big and small, old and new. There are temples at every corner, and you never know where you will stumble upon a small shrine. There are idols beneath what remains of trees (there are hardly any trees any more within the core area of the city), there are saffron covered forms resembling deities which seem attached to walls, an especially incongruous sight when the idol itself appears to be old, while the wall is evidently new…. And there are surprisingly large temples rising from what appear to be a bunch of houses. The city is sometimes colloquially said to be as old as time, and some of the shrines and temples are said to date back to times unknown, at least the deity itself, if not the structure. Not much remains of the ancient structures anyway. The city has seen more than its fair share of good and bad times. It has seen the heights of grandeur, and the lows brought about by destruction. The city that exists today has grown so haphaza...
It was Mohammed’s suggestion that we keep aside a day for the Parashuram Mahadeo temple. Mohammed was our jeep driver for the jungle safari. Since he seemed to know the area well, and agreed to take us there the next day, we agreed to take his advice, and, in retrospect, it is a good thing that we did! We planned to leave by 9:00 AM, after an early breakfast, but Samhith didn’t wake up, and we didn’t want to spoil his holiday by waking him up, so it was past 10:30 that we finally left. The Parashuram Mahadeo temple is a cave on a mountain, which is accessible from both, the foothills as well as the peak. When you approach the temple from Falna, there is a road leading up to the foothills, from where you have to climb up the mountain to reach the temple. From Kumbhalgarh, there is a road leading to the mountain peak, from where one has to walk down a path to the temple. View from the peak- on the right, the saffron flag indicates the location of the temple, and on the left, the building...