Galtaji
— — honey sandstone, spring water, and the long stairs up.
Not only on a wall.
“A cluster of pink sandstone temples folded into a narrow gorge in the Aravalli hills, ten kilometres east of Jaipur. Springs feed seven sacred tanks down the slope. The complex dates mostly to the eighteenth century and the patronage of Diwan Rao Kriparam under Sawai Jai Singh II. Rhesus macaques and grey langurs have the run of the upper stairs, which is how the place earned its other name in English.
Galtaji, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Galta Ji lies about ten kilometres east of central Jaipur, set in a fold of the Aravalli hills inside the boundaries of the Jaipur urban area. The site is an old Hindu pilgrimage centre, traditionally associated with the seventeenth-century ascetic Saint Galav, after whom the gorge is named. The present temple complex was developed in the early eighteenth century by Diwan Rao Kriparam, a courtier of Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, the founder of Jaipur. The complex is reached by a steep climb of stone stairs from the lower kunds.
The temples are cut and built from the pink-honey sandstone of the surrounding Aravalli ridges, the same stone that gives Jaipur's old city its colour. The principal Galtaji shrine has a distinctive curved roof on twin pillared pavilions, more domestic than a typical Rajasthani devasthan, decorated with painted frescoes that have softened under two centuries of weather. The Sitaram temple and the Hanuman shrine on the upper terraces follow the same palette, so the entire complex reads as one warm tone against the dry hillside.
Seven kunds, fed by perennial springs from the surrounding hills, step down through the gorge. The main tank, Galta Kund, is held to be especially holy and is said never to dry, even through the driest months of the Rajasthan summer. Water emerges from a carved cow-mouth spout, an iconography linked to the Ganges, and pilgrims bathe here particularly during Makar Sankranti in mid-January, when the festival draws large crowds to the lower kunds and the Surya temple on the ridge above.