…travelling to visit the Jain temple complex at Ranakpur. The immense and intricate temple surges up at you in the middle of nowhere after several hours of riding through unspoilt countryside.

Fields are irrigated the old way. A large square sculpted well and pots on a wheel turned by a team of water buffaloes who turn in never ending and mindless abandon all day and every day. The terra cotta cups empty into a trough and the whole business then works with gravitation since the mechanism is built high on a mound above the fields.

It is a simple pleasure to follow the stream with my eyes down the hand dug earth canals; straight, left onto a long line then turning turning sharply to the right, through fields of rice, vegetable gardens – ancient potagers as old as this slow and slumbering civilisation.

The temple, then, shouted out of this simple peasant countryside like a colony from a much more advanced and delicate planet. Hundreds of pillars hold up massively carved stone copulas, and each pillar is unique; none has an identical twin despite their similarities. The entire structure is said to date from the 15th Century , but the bizarre forms of gods with their contorted poses and four arms could easily date from the 25th Century.

What were the experiences and visions which inspired the belief in such fantastic creatures? I sometimes wonder just how powerful the hallucinations could have been to have fathered the entire pantheon of cows, monkeys, phallic symbols and sacred vaginas the Hindus light incense sticks in front of.

Bits of rice, geraniums, sugar granules and packets of cookies are offered up to gods with green skin and bulging muscles, gods with elephant heads and cobra hats.

The Jain temple mostly has spread-eagled minor goddesses with hour-glass figures and firm globulous breasts hanging on to the pillars as if strapped there from behind. In every alcove sit three enlightened gods their three eyes each staring off into wondrously empty and far-reaching space.

Families come and sit and perform their own pujas. After the chanting they throw some flower petals on an idol and ring a bell and go away. Some people wear masks over their mouths to avoid swallowing insects and thereby harming any form of animal life.