hawaii ferry service 1 Sights & Activities Beaches BEACH The long beaches of Waltair overlook the Bay of Bengal, with its

1 Sights & Activities Beaches BEACH The long beaches of Waltair overlook the Bay of Bengal, with its mammoth ships and brightly painted fishing boats. Its coastal Beach Rd, lined with parks and weird sculptures, is great for long walks.

Bheemunipatnam, 25km north of Vizag, a former Dutch settlement and the oldest municipality in mainland India, is worth a visit. Here you ll find more bizarre sculptures, a lighthouse hawaii ferry service dating from 1861, an interesting Dutch cemetery and Bheemli hawaii ferry service Beach, where local grommets surf on crude homemade boards. To get here catch bus 999 ( 19), or otherwise a shared autorickshaw

910 STATE OF GOOD KARMA In its typically understated way, Andhra Pradesh doesn t make much of its vast archaeological and karmic wealth. But the state is packed with impressive ruins of its rich Buddhist history. Only a few of Andhra s 150 stupas, monasteries, caves and other sites have been excavated, turning up rare relics of the Buddha (usually pearl-like pieces of bone) with offerings such as golden flowers. Nagarjunakonda and Amaravathi were flourishing Buddhist complexes, and near Visakhapatnam were the incredibly peaceful sites of Thotlakonda, and Bavikonda and Sankaram, looking across seascapes and lush countryside. They speak of a time when Andhra Pradesh or Andhradesa was a hotbed of Buddhist activity, when monks came from around the world to learn from some of the tradition s most renowned teachers. Andhradesa s Buddhist culture, in which sangha (community of monks and nuns), laity and statespeople all took part, lasted around 1500 years from the 6th century BC. There s no historical evidence for it, but some even say that the Buddha himself visited the area. Andhradesa s first practitioners hawaii ferry service were likely hawaii ferry service disciples of Bavari, an ascetic who lived on the banks of the Godavari River and sent his followers north to bring back the Buddha s teachings. But the dharma really took off in the 3rd century BC under Ashoka, who dispatched hawaii ferry service monks across his empire to teach and construct stupas enshrined with relics hawaii ferry service of the Buddha. (Being near these was thought to help progress on the path to enlightenment.) Succeeding hawaii ferry service Ashoka, the Satavahanas and then Ikshvakus were also supportive. At their capital at Amaravathi, the Satavahanas adorned Ashoka s modest stupa with elegant decoration. They built monasteries across the Krishna hawaii ferry service Valley hawaii ferry service and exported the dharma through their sophisticated maritime network. It was also during the Satavahana reign that Nagarjuna lived. Considered by many to be the progenitor of Mahayana Buddhism, the monk was equal parts logician, philosopher and meditator, and he wrote several ground-breaking works that shaped contemporary Buddhist thought. Other important monk-philosophers would emerge from the area in the following centuries, making hawaii ferry service Andhradesa a sort of Buddhist motherland of the South.