Garden of the Gods

Note the three climbers near the top on the right.

Two monks and two families on the path

Arumuganathaswami and Suriya watch as climbers slowly inch their way to the top of one of the outcroppings.

A college student greets toursts and invites them to see the Sun through his special telescope filled with multiple offset lenses and hydrogen gas. We could actually see a real-time gigantic solar flare in progress.

Ananda and 10-year-old Saroja chat with Paramacharya during breakfast on the final day in Denver.

This one is about 150 feet high.

}
];

height: 520,
width: 700,

transitionSpeed:150});

Rajkumar and Ananda Manikam (with daughter Saroja) drove our two swamis wo hours out of Denver to a famous rock formation called The Garden of the Gods. Spectacular red cliffs trust from the earth here. It's also a rock climbers haven and there were 12 or 15 climbers in full gear risking their lives on the sheer faces of stone.

This was once home to American Indian tribes who competed with mountain lions to carved a living out of the somewhat bleak and dry terrain.

The story is, if you believe it, that these formations were horizontal millions of years back and during a tektonic shift were uprighted, thus forming the unusual structures.