The town of Chamba is one of India’s oldest cities. It is said that as Buddha preached the way to enlightenment, 2,500 years ago, he passed Chamba. He was welcomed by the ruling prince of the state, and made many converts.

The town sits on a ledge above the Ravi River. The river is grey with melting snow, slipping off the great sheets of ice that cap the surrounding mountains. Below are dark green pine forests, splashed with the bright, luminescent green of rice fields.

The Chamba valley is cut off from the neighbouring Kangra valley by the Dhauladhar mountain range. It is cut off from Kashmir by the Pir Panjal. It was ruled for centuries as the princely state of Chamba, founded in 920AD by the raja (ruler) Sahil Varman. The state survived for 1,000 years, falling to the British in 1845. It is the oldest state in north India.

Chamba is an ancient city slowly slipping into the dust of time and decay. The streets are dusty, narrow alleyways lined with rotting rubbish. Mounds of refuse pile every corner. Holy cows graze on the rubbish. The alleyways stretch up into the surrounding mountains, sloping into dilapidated homes, beautiful colonial-style wooden buildings rotting into oblivion.

It is a strange place, I decide, stepping off the bus (what Africans would refer to as a “chicken bus”) and onto the dirty, packed-dirt floor of the bus stand. A statue of Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, bobs on the dashboard of the bus, a luminescent Virgin Mary beside him. I smell rotting rubbish and urine. It is crowded, noisy and polluted. Buses blow great wads of black exhaust fumes.

Looking for our hotel in the maze of alleys, each alike in its polluted haze of ancient grandeur, we watch the sun sink over the mountains. Sometimes we round a corner and find a beautiful, grand old building crumbling into the dust. Its wooden walls and balcony are rotted through. A hundred years ago, its decorated old-style windows looked out onto vistas of mountains. Now the rotting panes are surrounded by multi-storied wooden houses, each storey added as an afterthought, haphazardly onto layer after layer of life.

Sometimes the alley is not wide enough for the two of us. We slip through holding our backpacks. Sometimes we have to stand with our backs against the rotting wood walls of still-lived-in houses, waiting for the cows to pass.

In India, cows are holy, and have right of way.

We dodge the cows the next day, meandering through the maze of alleyways to the Lakshmi Narayan temple complex.

“Perhaps it is this way,” says my partner, Alison, as we round yet another corner and come face to face with yet another dead-end. A mound of rotting rubbish lines the end of the alley. A large, light-brown cow looks up from her grazing.

We have been navigating the back alleys of Chamba for an hour, slowly making our way higher and higher up the mountain. We can see a temple above the city-line, a lump of brown in a mass of green trees.

“Perhaps we should follow the singing,” says Alison, stepping over a small pile of rotting cabbage leaves and around yet another corner.

The singing sounds like what I have, after months in India, come to associate with devotional music. The kind played in temples. The words rise and fall over a melody of tambourines, flutes, drums. Interspersed in the sound is an instrument I cannot recognise. It is the instrument that gives the sound its strange, other-worldly, feeling. The sound associated with the gods.

The Lakshmi Narayan temple complex stands opposite the crumbling Akhand Chandi Palace. The complex houses six sikhara temples. The temples date from the 10th century to the 19th. They are built in the Himachal stone-hut style, and are covered with intricate, beautiful stone carvings. The oldest temple is dedicated to Lakshmi Narayan, or Vishnu, also known as the protector. The other temples are sacred to Radha Krishna, Shiva (also known as the destroyer), Triambkeshwar Mahdev, Gauri Shankar, and Lakshmi Damodar.

We can see the elongated domes of the temples above the wooden buildings. We walk up and up the alleyways. Suddenly the music stops. We round a corner and before us are six 30m-high temples, some of the most ancient in all of India.

We slip off our shoes at the entrance. Out of the shadows the concrete is burning hot, searing into the soles of our feet. The music starts again. A woman bows her head, her hands clasped before her face, before the first temple. A priest, wearing a white and blue sarong and a long-sleeved business shirt, places a garland of marigolds on the alter for her. The marigolds shine orange in the bright sunlight.

We are awed at the greatness of the temples. The stone is brown with age, worn smooth in places. Each temple stands 30m-high and is about 5m-wide. Its walls are covered with carvings. Beautiful, intricate, captivating carvings.

I spot a statue of Ganesh, inset between two pillars. His forehead is tikka-ed with red. Each morning in India, every woman of the house gets up before sunrise and performs puja (pronounced “poo-jah”). A puja is an offering. She will make her way to the temple of her choice, where she will offer the gods of her choice a garland of marigolds. When she has completed her offering, she will bless herself with the red of tikka-paste, a dot on the forehead. She will tikka the god too, and all her family. All statures of the gods in India (some counts reckon there are 330 million gods in the Hindu pantheon) are smothered in red tikka paste.

On either side of Ganesh are gods carved into the stone walls. I do not recognise them. One has six arms, each hand holds a cutlass. Some of the figures set into the stone walls are beautiful women, the folds of their saris clear and crisp. Each statue is no bigger than my torso.

The largest temple is dedicated to Vishnu. I am awed. It is 1,000-years-old. For a thousand years people have come here to worship. There are no signs announcing laws to protect it. No fence cordons off the walls from being rubbed smooth by the loving hands of devotees. The temple is a mass of life; it is used every day. A statue of the man-bird Garuda, Vishnu’s faithful servant, stands atop the temple. Beautiful, intricate designs are carved into the walls.

The temple is closed, a thick wire-grating closes off the god from the outside. Nearby is a statue of the bull Nandi. Nandi is the steed of Krishna. At all entrances to temples honouring Krishna, Nandi will face the entrance, as if protecting him.

This temple is also closed. The music of the priests floats through the stone carvings.

We walk round and round the temples, running from shadow to shadow on the hot concrete floor. We find a temple that is open. The wire grating separating the gods from mankind has been raised. Inside are two doll-like statues of a man and a woman. Each are dressed in gold finery. Each are draped in gold and red tinsel. Their long black hair falls from the crowns on their heads. They hold their hands up as if in greeting.

As we navigate our way down the dirty, rotting alleyways of Chamba I think of these gods. I think of the beautifully decorated stone-carved temples. I think nothing has changed in 1,000 years.

(Published in Saturday Star, November 2008)