Peddie in Mumbai and South India 2017

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bangles, Ganesha, and auto rickshaws back to Meenakshi Temple for evening ritual

Posted by Cathy Watkins on March 12, 2017

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King Elephanta Crab Caves

Today I learned once again the power of viewing art in person. It's one thing to be sitting in the library of your elite east coast boarding school's library looking at your MacBook's screen while sipping on some tea in order to skim over endless readings on some dark caves in the middle of nowhere India, and it's a completely different thing to be swallowing the humid air and hearing the monkeys screech as you are sitting in those dark caves in the middle of nowhere India. I took a brief pause after exploring the main cave of Elephanta in order to jot down some of my thoughts, and my brain was running at a mile a minute with theories, ideas, and plain old thoughts about the cave. The cave we explored today on Elephanta Island is a temple dedicated to the Hindu God Shiva. Shiva is simultaneously the God of Creation, the God of Preservation, and the God of Destruction (seen in the picture below). Therefore, he is a largely popular choice of worship for Hindus. Th...

Week 1 Completed!

Let us preface this by saying that we became best friends because of the Asian Studies trip to Thailand/Cambodia the summer of 2016, so we are a huge fan of school trips abroad. After our 'restaurant hopping' yesterday night for dinner, we woke up well rested and ready to conquer the day. As usual, we had a large selection of fried rice, various breads, and exotic fruits. Sadly, we were unable to order mango lassis, our favorite drink. We first went to the Meenakshi temple, which as our tripmate Maggie said, looked like a big, edible candy. Its five entrance gates stood tall with various red, green, blue, and yellow Hindu idols. In the temple, we saw a golden pillar, which in many cultures represents the center of the world. We connected these to a golden pillar we also saw in Thailand. One really interesting thing was the statue of Shiva, the supreme God, and his wife, Parvati. Shiva wanted his followers to worship Parvati as much as him, so he had statues...

Haji Ali's Mosque and unbelievable fruit juice

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bangles, Ganesha, and auto rickshaws back to Meenakshi Temple for evening ritual

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