rivers

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A thousand lingas

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The previous post in this series is here..

After getting down from the reclining Buddha temple, we had a very short drive to another parking area to see the 1000 linga river.

The kings had carved a 1000 lingas and other reliefs on the rock face after blocking the river and once done, had released the river across these carvings. The idea was that the water was blessed by the gods as it flowed over their reliefs and came down as a waterfall. They also planted herbs alongside so the falling water was medicinal.

The water source is a spring and you can see it gush water out in the video at the end of the post. It was cold fresh spring water at its source!

We walked a good mile along the river till we had crossed most of the lingas and turned back. The crowd was starting to arrive.

The next two photos are Sarak taking our making a selfie and the actual selfie..

We prayed at the little Buddha shrine near the river source (which used to be a Linga at some point back in time) and walked back. The buddhist take over some 700 years ago was apparently violent in some places and peaceful in some places where kings reconciled and built temples for Vishnu and Buddha side by side to appease people. Guess we now know where the “buddha is the 10th avatar of vishnu” logic came from. In Hindu mythology the 10th avatar is yet to arrive (Kalki.. who shows up to cleanse the world and close out things).

The video does a better job for this leg of the trip than the photos..

There was a lot of water flowing in the river which meant our next stop was going to be amazing!

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The magic of Charles bridge and the Vltava river

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The previous post in this series is here..

Good thing the photos and videos are bringing back memories.

After our visit to the castle complex, our guide walked us down the hundreds of steps to the Charles bridge that was built starting in 1347 AD!

It is a fantastic bridge as are the statues on it.

We walked down the steps and right before we got to the bridge we got some funnel cake. It is a local delicacy. We missed it in Budapest.. but got it here. It was close to a Churro..

After this walk across the bridge, we got to see the old Jewish Quarter, one of the oldest areas in Prague, followed by a lunch with local cuisine (which doesn’t have much in the way of Vegetarian options).. so we ate fried cheese and bread.. the rest of the group loved it. This was a restaurant in the basement of a 800 year old building. They had to put special wiring in to light the place with bulbs. It was interesting.

This was followed by more walking and finally a boat cruise on the river to see all the landmark buildings from the river. When the cruise was over, we said bye to our guide. He told us to walk back to the hotel through a gap! We went “duh”.. why did we Uber here in the morning. we could have just walked it!

a few photo galleries.. We walked past the place where they shot the first Mission Impossible movie and actually recognized it. Our guide was full of information on events that we could recognize from famous movies, famous artists who came to Prague and were inspired, there was a lot of talk of Duran Duran, etc. He was an “all things Prague” guy!

A lot of photos in the Portrait format gallery.. tall structures, small roads, go figure!

The clock tower in the old square was supposed to be a highlight and our guide said go there and don’t miss it. San and me decided to walk around a bit. We also got to spend time at the Kafka head which turns every few minutes. When we saw the head, we realized it was 300 feet from our hotel. So we decided to take a break go get changed and then get back to the square.

A video highlights reel of this part of the Prague tour..

The last part of our evening in another post..

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Cruising the Danube in Budapest

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The previous post in this series is here..

Note this was July of 2024! Just getting to blog about it..

We flew from Zadar to Budapest on RyanAir..It was a short and sweet flight. Once at the Budapest Airport we took a Taxi straight to our hotel (The Danubius Astoria in City center) and after checking in, we came out to get another taxi to go to the docks. The check in at the hotel took a few extra minutes as there was a line. We had tickets(thanks to viator) for what we thought was a sunset cruise in the river Danube. Had to race there. So we got an Uber. Note that there is a lot of one way streets in Budapest and it reminded me of Chennai. Crossing the road and getting an Uber in the direction you are going will save you a good 10 minutes and money! We had just started exploring the city and learned this lesson the hard way. Turned out the sun set only after our cruise finished.. Still it was a nice evening spent seeing the city from the river. We would get to see the city the next morning anyways.

Here are the photos from the cruise. 

The viator site made a big deal about this tour coming with a "drink". There was champagne.. but we asked them for juice instead and they were not expecting that! 

it was alternating between capturing things on the side of the river, taking selfies or handing the phone to the couple from UK who shared the table with us to click photos of us.. spent two hours doing that!

We were already craving some Indian food and were told to check out a place by friends. Initially we thought we could walk to the Indian resaurant from the cruise but it was a long walk and we were not sure if we would make it in time. So we got an Uber. 

This restaurant called "Indigo, flavors of India" in Buda area, was really posh and the food and service was just fantastic. 

After we had our fill, we decided to take another Uber back to our hotel. It was time for a hot shower and get some much needed sleep!

Video highlight of the cruise

We did get a good nights rest and the next morning, had to find some breakfast (not included in the hotel) before going on another little adventure.

Copyright © 2012, Sundar Narayanan. All rights reserved.