Today I had a very nice relaxing day and got a lot accomplished. I know I wanted to take a break from the touristy thing, but the primary attraction in Sanchi is some very old Buddhist Stupas and ruined monasteries.
The cost for the Buddhist site is 250 Rupees and it takes about 10 minutes to walk from town. You walk part way up a road and then on your right you will see a large stone stair case, there are about 100 steps :)
Up top is so incredibly beautiful, the lawn is well manicured and there are monks walking around in those fancy red robes. I'd never seen Stupas before, they are basically giant beehive shaped cone things in the ground... I believe the largest is 36 metres in diameter and there are these gateway arches at the entrances to the wall around it was are just fantastically carved.
I walked out to the stone wall around the compound and sat on it for about 45 minutes and watch the farms below... it was quiet and just so relaxing up there, a far cry away from the hectic world of any reasonably sized town or city. The farms were green as far as the eye could see and it was really beautiful because I've pretty much been confined to sightseeing in larger cities for the past few weeks.
The archaeological museum was quite small but it has some wonderful Buddhist sculptures, some of which I'm told are about as old as you can find anywhere. The great thing about the museum was that it only costs 5 rupees, both Indians and foreigners pay the same! First time I've gone anywhere and that has happened.
I spend about 3 hours writing an article for a Masonic Newsletter that I was asked to contribute to and I have to say that it is coming along nice, though it is slightly longer than was requested. How do you remove important details... though it could also be just me being long-winded.
So as I was writing at a table outside my room I saw group of men walk by, two of them were totally butt ass naked... long beards though, I think they were some sort of Pilgrims or religious people. The things you see in India will amaze you, or confuse you lol.
