Elephanta Caves

By Kishan Sonpal

This winter break I went to India. Not only did I enjoy seeing my grandparents but also seeing the Elephanta Caves. The Elephanta Caves are located on a little island off Mumbai, on the Arabic Ocean and is in a little town named Gharapuri. The Caves were built by Indians sometime around the 6^th century A.D. and they were discovered by the Portuguese.

The reason the caves are called Elephanta Caves is because the Portuguese found an elephant statue in front of the main cave. When the Portuguese came to India they visited these caves and gave its official name. These caves were built from a giant rock inside to outside and from bottom to top. There are several columns which are only meant for beauty, not for support.  It has statues of nine different forms of the Indian god of destruction, Lord Shiva. The Portuguese used the statues for target practice. I even got to see a bullet in one of the statues.

One pose has Lord Shiva meditating.   Another is him destroying evil, and the last one is him at his wedding.   My favorite is the “Trimurti,” which is a structure that has three heads . One of Lord Shiva the destroyer second Brahma the creator and third Vishnu the maintainer.  The locals believe the three gods keep the world in balance.

This place is very beautiful.  It has the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other.  It has been considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. [United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization.]  But beware of the monkeys. They can cause a lot of ruckus. They will snatch any food or drink from your hand. One monkey snatched a water bottle from my dad and started drinking from it. It was very funny. This was one of the best parts of my trip.  

                                                                         Trimurti

Katmandu, Nepal

By Jessica Moyher

     On vacation I went to Nepal!  My favorite part was seeing the Monkey Temple. They called it the Monkey Temple because a lot of monkeys live there. The monkeys were nice and didn’t attack my family and me. At one part was a tree where there were monkeys that swung from the tree to the next and then to the next. It didn’t smell like anything unusual but it was cold and the monkeys were screeching loudly. It sounded like someone was getting murdered but saying ‘OO! OO! AH! AH!’ I thought that it was pretty cool to see a big temple filled with monkeys.

       There was a big temple with Buddha eyes and near the bottom were pray wheels that went around the temple. Prayer wheels are cylinders that people spin and pray. In a corner were a lot of mini temples that looked like a graveyard. There was also a golden water fountain. I don’t know if that the fountain was made of real gold but it looked real. Now I thought that is awesome.

      On the top was a humongous stair case made of rock that lead to a great view of Katmandu. When I heard we were going to the Monkey Temple I thought it was going to be a temple with monkeys in it and smell like dirty monkeys. But it seemed really cool. And that was an amazing trip. We went to other places and went trekking but that was the best part in Katmandu.