Vizianagaram and Bobbili

Tuesday we went to Vizianagaram. We visited the fort there, which had been functional and had even housed the king until about forty years ago. It's now an elementary school.



We realized when were there that when BYU says "The world is our campus," they're not kidding. Our slogans are everywhere.




After visiting the fort we went to see the current king at the palace where he now lives. This is the king who facilitated our visit to the inner sanctum of the Simhachalam temple. Jain painted this picture to give to him. It is of the relief above the elephant drain I uploaded a picture of earlier. He was very pleased with the painting.



The king and his family served us lunch. He was very gracious, but not as interesting as you might think. His palace is not much more than a much bigger version of our apartment, and he and his wife and daughter were not grandly dressed. They did have many priceless objects, though, including pictures with and notes from Queen Elizabeth, a sword given by the Prince of Wales 130 years ago, a Mogul box, and a 16th century Portugese map of India, among other things. My favorite things in his house, though, were the pictures of his family. These were his grandparents.



After lunch we went to see an old palace that is now a guest house. It was a little more along the lines of what we expected a palace to look like. This was the palace of the king of Bobbili.



Bobbili kings must have really loved hunting, because there were all kinds of animal heads stuck on the wall and whole stuffed ones lining the rooms. This one became functional.



We wandered around there taking pictures of things while some newspaper men wandered around taking pictures of us. This is Becky on the front porch.



We went to another palace when we'd finished there. It is sort of falling into ruin, but it is still functioning as a Bobbili museum and has some offices in it that are used. We met the Prince of Bobbili there. He explained a lot to us about the war a few hundred years ago. He was also very nice. These were from the sort of museum upstairs.




After we were done there we stopped again at the traditional temple of the Bobbili kings. It was a long day, and it sort of felt like I was a little kid again going site-seeing with my parents. This was probably amplified by the fact that the car we were in had no air conditioning, and the trip there and back was more than two hours long each way. I think it was the kind of day that sounds cooler than it actually was, but it was still pretty good.