Sravanabelagola is quite a mouthful. In more ways than one, as my pictures will reveal. This quiet little town is home to the famous statue of Lord Gomateshwara, of the Jain religion. This statue is 18 metres high, and has been standing right here in Karnataka all this while - but I only discovered it on Monday. It is carved all out of one piece of rock and is the world's tallest monolith.
Needless to say, I could not resist using the zoom lens.
It took several hours to drive out here from Bangalore, but that's just the start of the journey. After arriving at the temple, there's still the small matter of climbing 1000 steps - great big granite steps in the side of a mountain. It is not as easy as it sounds, and I recommend warm-up exercises - my legs were in agony for the next three days. But it was well worth the climb, to finally find the statue towering over everything. (The railings you see in the picture below is a modern addition to help us unfit 21st centurians to stagger up those steps - and that picture was taken only about a third of the way up!) It really was a wonderful experience to add to my life.
