Last year I wrote a little about Hullical and Pannaven, the lovely little villages perched just behind our retreat here on the mountainside. Between the two, there are at least 5 temples, and each is dedicated to a particular deity. Last year while I was here, Pannaven’s new Ganesh temple was being built overlooking a gorgeous valley. The site was chosen because a herd of nine or so elephants had made its way into the town a couple years back and bedded down here where the forest meets the village. The same group of elephants came through again last year just before our arrival, and at the new temple they had just finished putting up the plaster deity of Ganesh on the roof with a whole consort of gods and goddesses. (Apparently the elephants agree with the choice dedication)! This year we came back to a freshly painted temple and were invited in to see the sanctuary and altar. Ganesh sits prominently on the top deck, just above another covered carving of some of his family including his parents Shiva and Parvathi, and one of his siblings, Kartikeya, the god of war. And yes, the sky is THAT blue!
In order to enter we must take off our shoes and wash our feet.
Outside the temple is a group of nine sacred entities called a Navagraha, representative of the nine planets. They are worshipped by Hindus to overcome any hindrance, obstacle or bad luck. Faithful believers pray to the Navagrahas before they pray to any other deity or the temple’s namesake, so they are located in the area outside the sanctuary. You can see in my pictures, each Navagraha is draped in a colored cloth representative of its planet, their foreheads smudged with a tilak made of sandalwood paste and turmeric. It is customary to circumnambulate this collection of idols nine times (one for each). If the Navagraha is not present outside the temple, then worshippers will take three clockwise loops around the entire temple. This action is either called a Parikrama (meaning “path surrounding something”), or it’s called a Pradakshina (meaning to go around in a clockwise direction).
Even though we are not dressed in appropriate attire (we’ve been walking through the tea and are in our hiking gear), we are invited by a local caretaker to go in, so we wrap our shawls around our bare shoulders, and enter.
Inside the temple is the main altar of Ganesh with fresh flowers, incense, and multiple oil lamps burning. Just outside the altar and looking in at Ganesh is this other stone carved animal, also adorned with flower garlands, a banana, and a champa flower (smells like Heaven!)
We spend a few minutes here and then head to the steps back to the path where our shoes are waiting for us.
The town of Pannaven stretches out from the edge of the forest and surrounding tea fields down a little walkway that leads to a diminutive village of about 20 terraced houses, each with some variation of tile roofs, pastel washed in blues, greens, and one pink with red trim. Beside it is a crumbling home with roof tiles in disarray which looks deserted. It’s hard to say how old some of these cottages are; some of the tea plantations date back 1835 here, but the local tribes existed here long before the English colonized these areas and set up their tea operations. The original huts of the hill tribes were made of red clay with teak beams and thatched roofs, and as far as I know, none of these remain here.
We pass by numerous outlying cottages, follow the pathway through the tea, visit Lakshmi, the retreat’s cow (who is due any moment now with a new calf), and turn the bend toward Mountaintop.
Thank goodness we get to walk every day–there are so many temples to visit and tea fields to romp through…
Until the next post, much love and many blessings,
Katie
Dragonfly Yoga Barn, Studio & Retreat 