It takes an hour by boat to get to Elephanta. Once on the island, you climb a set of 120 steps up the hill, to the cave that houses a fourteen hundred year old temple to Shiva.
There is something quite poetic about the idea of "crossing a sea, climbing a mountain, entering a cave" to see God. It is a journey across, upwards, and inwards, and the sculptures that await at the end are a magnificent reward.
First sighting of Elephanta island from boatShiva is such a paradoxical, puzzling God! In the first place, he is both male and female. He is angry and happy, forgiving and vengeful, creator and destroyer, an ascetic and a skilled lover. It doesn't make sense! Or perhaps it makes enormous sense, because we're all a bit like that?
In any case, Elephanta mirrors all of his contradictions with art that simply blows me away.
Trimurti Sadasiva - Five aspects of Shiva in one sculpture
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