Palitana

20 or more people squished into a motorcycle-rickshaw 

Birds sitting on cactus in Palitana

Lizard in Palitana

People selling flowers in Palitana

A statue of a temple guardian

Part of the temple

A pile of roses from the temple offerings

A woman starting to climb up Palitana with 28 pieces of cloth on her head

A man being carried up to Palitana by a doli

A group of nuns climbing up to Palitana

From Gir National Park, my family and I drove six hours up to a town called Palitana. Palitana is a holy place for Jains.  There are over a hundred temples on the hill and they are enclosed in fort like walls.  On the way there, we saw a motorcycle-rickshaw carrying more than 20 people. We stayed at a Dharamshala, which is a hotel run by the temples, but you have to bring your own towel and stuff like that. In a Dharamshala, breakfast starts after sunrise and dinner ends at 6 PM. The usual meals at a Dharamshala are simple food. For every meal, you buy a token for each person then sit down at this long table with other people. The severs come around with the food, and they serve you as much as you want to eat until you're full. The day after my family and I reached the Dharamshala, my mom, my dad, my grandma and I went in the car to the place where you start climbing up to Palitana and we hired a doli. A doli, as you can see in the picture, is something that you sit on if you have a hard time walking. It is a cushion attached to ropes, and then the two people attach it to the bamboo and carry you up. To get to Palitana you have to climb 3,200 REALLY steep steps in the hot sun and then go down, altogether the steps for the whole thing up and down would be 6,400 steps. It was really tiring. On the way up to the temples in Palitana, I saw a lot of nuns.  One of the nuns ran down from the temple and she jumped 5 steps at a time, it was really cool!