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| Devi near the Big Buddha treasure in Phuket, southern Thailand (Julie0904/flickr.com) |
(Phuket.com) A few years ago, if anyone traveled anywhere south of Phuket [poo-KIT] City and looked up at the ridge of hills running down the center of the island [peninsula], one would see a towering monument under construction right at the top.
This is the Big Buddha, as it is known locally, destined to become a local landmark and a place for both tourists, pilgrims, and devout Thai Buddhists to visit.
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| The Big Buddha, Phuket, Thailand (media-cdn.tripadvisor.com) |
About 10 years ago a group of friends were walking through the forest in the Nakkerd Hills between Chalong and Kata [Beaches] when they stumbled upon a place with stunning vistas of both sides of the island -- Chalong Bay lay in one direction, while on the other they looked down over Kata Beach and the Andaman Sea. It would, they thought, make a perfect place for a viewpoint -- something that could become as well known as Phuket’s favorite sunset viewpoint, Laem Phromthep. More |
| Ananda Buddha Vihara, Hyderabad, India (VenkataSaiKrishna/flickr.com) video |
Buddhist Temple in India
(Urban-India.net) I read a small byline in my Lonely Planet Guide about a quaint Buddhist temple on a hill in Hyderabad.
Off we went to the Ananda Buddha Vihara. We went up to East Maredpally and from there took a rickshaw to Mahendra Hills. Not surprisingly, the rickshaw driver hadn’t heard of the place either. We asked him to take us to Mata Amritanandmayi’s Ashrama, which is next to the temple, as he concentrated on coaxing the rickshaw up the steep streets. This Buddhist temple is the last building at the edge of a hillock [with a great view over the city]. More
Western-style Buddha of Central Asia (Gandhara, Bactria, Greece)
Gandhara is an ancient region or province invaded in 326 B.C. by Alexander the Great, who took Charsadda (ancient Puskalavati) near present-day Peshawar (ancient Purusapura) and then marched eastward across the Indus into the Punjab as far as the Beas river (ancient Vipasa). Gandhara constituted the undulating plains, irrigated by the Kabul River from the Khyber Pass area, the contemporary boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan, down to the Indus River and southward towards the Murree hills and Taxila (ancient Taksasila), near Pakistan's present capital, Islamabad.
Its [Westernized] Buddhist art, however, during the first centuries of the Christian era, had adopted a substantially larger area, together with the upper stretches of the Kabul River, the valley of Kabul itself, and ancient Kapisa, as well as Swat and Buner towards the north. More |
| Thai faith is strong (Wacharapol) |
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