Palitana - પાલીતાણા

At Palitana, some 860 Jain temples grace the top of a lonely, rocky hill in the middle of nowhere; mostly small but beautifully carved, some date back almost a thousand years. To see them, you must climb over 3,000 steps from the base to the top of the mountain (there's this idea in India that temples have greater powers if you have to expend a great deal of effort to reach them). Pilgrims start the climb around 4:00 am, reaching the summit before sunrise, so we were the only fools going up in the blazing sun of the afternoon. The benefit was that there was hardly a soul up there and we had the still, beautifully haunting space to ourselves.