Thursday, April 11, 2013

Bhimunipatnam March 1

On Friday March 1 Anja, Ilse and I continued our documentation of heritage buildings in Bhimunipatnam.

In the morning we picked up Samuel and walked around the city, noting a number of older buildings, identifiable by their use of sloping tile roofs, rather than flat cement roofs that started to be used in the mid-20th century.


An unidentified tile-roofed building

We spotted a dog clearly with a bad skin disease that make it look like the closest thing that I have ever seen to a literal Schweinehund (“pig dog” of German language fame)


The Schweinehund

As we walked around we saw a vehicle going down the street elaborately decorated as a horse-drawn carriage bearing a statue of Vivekananda, the famous Hindu figure from the late 19th century.


The Vivekananda vehicle

We came to another unidentified building with an elaborate entrance. There was nothing special inside other than one side room at the entrance set up as a shrine with a fragment of a wall painting still preserved, something we have not seen elsewhere in the town.



The elaborate entrance


The shrine


The fragment of wall painting

We ended up at the Canadian Baptist School founded in the late 19th century. We got a tour of the buildings on the campus, including the oldest one, still in use as a classroom.


One of the classrooms in the oldest building

After lunch with the sisters at St. Ann’s, Anja, Ilse and I went with the auto to the early Buddhist site of Bavikonda south of the town, which has been reconstructed after excavations and is well maintained as an attraction for Buddhist tourists.


Bavikonda

Near the site entrance is a modern Buddhist sculpture garden with scenes from the life of the Buddha


The sculpture garden



A scene from the life of the Buddha

We then walked along the beach nearby. Long stretches are undeveloped because the waves and undercurrents make it unsafe to swim there.


The beach

Back in Bhimunipatnam at 5:00, we let our auto driver go and Ilse and I went to an internet place in the town, but were soon thwarted by a power outage. Meanwhile Anja went to meet the sisters for 6:00 Mass at the nearby Roman Catholic Church, where Ilse and I joined them. We got a ride back to the school in time for dinner.

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