Unakoti

Hidden in the forested hills of north Tripura near Kailashahar, Unakoti is one of the most extraordinary and least-known rock-art sites in India: a hillside covered in colossal images of Shiva and other deities, carved and sculpted between roughly the 7th and 9th centuries. The name means 'one less than a crore' — one less than ten million — from the legend that a crore of gods and goddesses were turned to stone here.

The centrepiece is the vast Unakotiswara Kal Bhairava, a Shiva head some 10 metres high, crowned with an elaborate carved headdress that is itself the height of a person. Around it, cut into the rock and scattered across the slope, are giant figures of Ganesha, Nandi bulls, Durga astride a lion, and rows of faces emerging from the stone, many still half-buried and moss-covered.

The mix of high relief carvings and free-standing sculptures, in a wild jungle setting with a waterfall running through it, gives Unakoti a haunting, otherworldly atmosphere quite unlike a conventional temple. A large fair, Ashokastami, is held here each April. The site is on India's UNESCO tentative list.