Sajjangad

I had another chance to travel outside of Mumbai, this time to a little hill fort in the countryside from the 1600s that has been turned into a an ashram. This is the furthest off the beaten path I've been in my life. I saw an amazingly quiet and serene monastery, nature, and some more parts of India that took my breath away.

Here I am trying to look dignified and serene just like all the Brahmins that are here and all the paintings of gods, priests, and warriors in buildings here.

It was really cool to see the monkeys up close here.

When India was ruled by a Muslim people called the Mughals, one Hindu king named Shivajee helped kick them out of Maharashtra. Sajjangad was one of his forts, and after creating an independent kingdom, he gave it to his guru to make into an ashram. Shivajee has a big presence in Mumbai too; both the airport and the central railway station are named after him, and one Maharashtriyan Nationalist political party calls itself 'Shivajee's Army'. This painting I took a picture of inside one temple.

I saw a lot of water buffalo and cows. We even had to stop on the highway due to a cow in the road!

I got yelled at for taking photos of cows and told that I was "disrupting the ghee-making proccesses". Ghee is an indian butter I eat daily in almost everything.

I got to sit in Sajjangad's library which was fun too (reading the small English section).

 I'm on a boat!

This is an area where three rivers combine, very far off the beaten path, like the rest of this trip.