On the 12th of April, Cesca and I vis­ited the largest sun dial in the
world. The Jantar Mantar of Jaipur was built in 1771 and is an
amaz­ing ancient achive­ment. Massive 27 meter high stone instu­ments
spell out the date, time and Zodiac sign with an incred­ible 2 seconds
accur­acy! The excur­sion through Jai Singh’s Jantar is a unique
exper­i­ence of walk­ing through solid geo­metry and encoun­ter­ing a
col­lect­ive astro­nom­ical sys­tem designed to probe the heavens.

This image is of the Jai Prakash (Mir­ror of the Heav­ens) that uses the
sun­light to point out which con­stel­la­tion the sun is cur­rently in.
Its giant bowl shape, sunk into the ground, is itself a work of art.
The sci­ence is pro­found. Notice the shadow on the marble? This is the
marker.

So, it is def­in­itely now the 13th of April; my birth­day. I have had
such an excit­ing 31st year on our planet, what with travel,
earth­quakes, rain in the deserts, close encoun­ters with tigers,
cro­codiles and even giant moths embed­ded in my ears, I can’t ima­gine
what is to come next!

So, from my bed in Jaipur, India I shout my “bar­baric yawp” and to all
those who share this day with me (Lex my friend for one), have a happy
birthday.

Its in the stars!

Basho

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