Helen Stephenson's India Trip - June-July, 2006 - Lord Shiva

Saturday June 24^th ...continued

Then we headed back towards Gurgaon and the driver said that sight-seeing was finished, but he did make one further stop for me to take pictures of a huge statue of Lord Shiva. This was another place where taking off shoes was a requirement. The people at the hotel told me later that Lord Shiva is in charge of destruction and disaster but that he also saves your life, so presumably while he’s whipping up storms and destroying your property, he’s making sure that it doesn’t fall in on top of you.

Just to give you some idea of the scale of this statue, I have included a close-up of the tail of the snake hanging down the statue's chest. A pigeon is perched right on the tip of the snake's tail, and it's tiny!

Here are two pictures of small shrines within the garden containing Lord Shiva's statue.

Once back at the hotel, I downloaded my pictures to the company laptop I was using while in Delhi and also put them onto the Jobo Giga One. I started writing my diary, but realised that it was going to take a while, so I showered off the day’s grime and then took myself down to that lovely swimming pool. The sun was setting and they’d just lit the flambeaux and I had a beautiful swim. Then I had something to eat in the excellent Indian restaurant on the premises and spent an hour on the Internet, by which time it wasn’t Saturday any more, and with the driver arriving at 10:00am for some Sunday sightseeing, it was bedtime.