Masrur Temples

Carved out of solid rock in the early 8th century, and never finished. The complex is laid out on a square grid in the Kangra Valley, a main shikhara ringed by smaller shrines in a mandala pattern, with a sacred pool cut beside it and the Dhauladhar range filling the view to the northeast, which is the direction the temples deliberately face. Come knowing most of the sculpture is gone, lost or shaken off by earthquakes, and that two of the three entrances were left incomplete along with a fourth that was barely begun. What survives is the ambition of the plan more than the carving.