Awesome Akshardham

Just before leaving for India I did a quick search for sites to see in New Delhi. A photo of the Akshardham temple came up, I mentioned it to a friend of mine who is from New Delhi and I was surprised when she said she'd never heard of it. I was thinking to myself "How on earth can you not know about this temple? It's massive and must have been in New Delhi for centuries."

Once in New Delhi, I came to find out that I was only partly right. It is massive, in fact it's the largest Hindu temple in the world, but it hasn't been around for centuries. It just opened in 2005.

Simply put, this temple is awe inspiring. Almost every inch was intricately hard carved by 7,000 artisans over a five-year period with beautiful images related to the Hinduism.

There are a few hokey features that we skipped over, i.e. an IMAX theater, an animatronic boat ride, etc. Nonetheless, when we were there I felt as though I was having a similar experience to those who saw Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, or even the Pyramids in their prime. Five hundred years from now when the carvings at Akshardham have been ground down by the elements and the temple is a shadow of its current form, people will look at it and wonder how beautiful it must have been when it was first built and unfortunately they'll never really know.

Cameras aren't permitted but there are plenty of photos on the temple's website, more info in the Wiki entry, and here's a brief video about the Akshardham...