Temple Festival in Kerala

*This post was originally posted under a different title that I realized that factual incorrect so I’ve changed it.

Greetings from Kochi (Cochin) in Kerala! I’ve been in Kochi for the past 5 days. It’s one of the largest cities in the state of Kerala and is an interesting destination because it was a port for European and Middle Eastern explorers and traders and because it borders the Keralan backwaters region. The most interesting experience that I’ve had while in Kochi has been attending a festival at a nearby temple. Like many temple festivals, it was characterized by days of classical music and dance and parades of the temple elephants. The first day that I attended the festival, Maria (a European girl I met) and I took a local bus out to the temple. Someone pointed us the way, but we confused when we got to a street and just saw rows of street vendors selling sweets and deep fried peppers/bananas/potatoes (it kinda reminded me of state fairs) and strings of lights on trees and on the stalls. When we got to the end of the street, we saw this building lit up with multi-color lights. The building turned out to be the temple.

The Sree Poornathrayesa Temple

We watched as the temple’s elephants were paraded around the courtyard area and drummers made music. Since this temple had some wealthy patrons, they have 13 elephants.

The elephants all lined up

As the festival went on for 8 days, Maria and I returned two nights later to see part of an all night Kathakali dance performance. Kathakali is a old Keralan theatrical dance style that focuses on gestures and expressions to act out stories, mainly from Hindu texts. The Kathakali started a little after midnight and we only stayed for two hours not for the full six hour performance. It was definitely a unique experience.

It turns out that the temple that I went to has a Wikipedia page. Also for those of you who have requested something to look up on Wikipedia in order to procrastinate, I’ll also link to the Wikipedia page for Kathakali.

Photo Highlights

Scene from one of my bus rides in Tamil Nadu

 

One of the entrances to the famous Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple in Madurai

While in Cochin, I went to an elephant festival. Part of an eight celebration hosted by a nearby temple.

The southern state of Kerala is famous for it's backwaters region, a network of connected lakes along the coast. I went on a boat trip of part of the backwater region on Sunday.

View from the boulders where we went climbing in Hampi.

Flooded street in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu

Two Months In India (and other brief notes)

This post is in honor of having spent two months (a little long actually) in India. While I have greatly enjoyed my time here, so far, there are some things that I miss about the US. Here is my list of five things that I miss (in no particular order):

- Breakfast cereal – Wouldn’t have thought that I’d tire of Indian food after a month. I definitely feel the need to try to satisfy some cravings for Western food items from time to time. In general, I still eat Indian food and I enjoy trying new things and have had some delicious meals, snacks and desserts, but I’ve realized that I particularly miss cereal.

- Restraint in Honking One’s Automobile Horn – Too much honking, enough said.

- Vehicle Emissions Inspections – I don’t think I will ever complain about this again as it is a very valuable regulatory measure.

- Sidewalks – This kind of goes with the honking and the exhaust emissions, it’s often unpleasant to walk to places within cities and towns, which is probably my only real complaint about the country.

- Not having to explain that 21 is too young to be married – If I had 10 rupees for everytime someone either asked me where my husband was or if I was married, my trip would probably be financed for me.

 

Other Notes:

- I was confused/amused by a sign in Mamallapuram (at the hospital) that said this, ” If you catch AIDS, who will catch fish.”

- In Madurai, my celebrity went beyond handshakes and photos to endorsements. I was randomly stopped by a man with a camera and a microphone who asked me to say, “Krishna TV, viewer’s choice.” I hope that Krishna Tv (if they use my endorsement) provides a quality product that I won’t regret calling the ‘viewer’s choice.’

 

 

Quality Time on Buses in Tamil Nadu

For the past few days, I’ve been moving rather briskly through some towns and cities in Tamil Nadu. As these towns have been fairly close together (no more than 200km), I’ve been riding buses quite frequently. The countryside in Tamil Nadu is full of rice paddies (earning the area the title of the “rice bowl of India” (well this was according to one guidebook and I think the people in the Punjab might dispute this, but that’s ok)). The roads are one line each way and are shared by buses, tractors, ox drawn carts, cars, people on cycles, people walking, trucks, and the occasional auto-rickshaw. There’s an excessive amount of honking as that denotes wanting to pass someone, passing someone, alerting someone that you’re changing lanes, etc. When the bus stops at stations along the way, the stops are usually short (2-10 minutes) and during this time men carrying baskets of food (samosas, vada, cooked beans, chips, pineapple, etc.) climb onto the bus to sell things. They serve the food on newspaper and magazine cutouts. Lots of excitement.

 

Mini Post

Some random thoughts:

- Today, I witnessed my first legit Indian rain storm. Not surprisingly, the novelty ran out quickly. I left Tirupati at 7 this morning (side note: if you’re ever in India, or any country for that matter, and you think to yourself, ‘I’ll stay near the bus station that shuttles thousands of people to and from the city at all hours of the day because being near the bus station is convienent’ re-evaluate the situation immediately) for Kanchipurum in the state of Tamil Nadu. It started raining right before my bus arrived at the bus stand so when I got off the bus, after 10 minutes of rain, the bus area and most of the major streets were flooded at least an inch. I caught another bus to Mamallapuram, on the coast of Tamil Nadu, where I will stay for two nights. The forecast shows that it’s going to be raining a lot all over Tamil Nadu and the neighboring state of Kerala for at least the next week so I may be leaving the south sooner than expected.

- I experienced theft for the first time today. Someone stole my umbrella (actually my dad’s umbrella, sorry dad)! Why couldn’t they have taken something less useful like my passport?

- India oddity : In bus stations and train stations all over the country, there are scales for people to weigh themselves. They look a little like carnival attractions with flashing color lights. At first I thought that your weight would be flashed to everyone, but was informed that after feeding the machine a rupee, it gives you a slip of paper with your weight and a positive message about yourself.

Darshan with the Devout

I almost decided to title this post ‘Pummeled by the Pilgrims,’ but decided against it.

I am currently in Tirupati, in southern Andhra Pradesh. Tirupati is famous for being several kilometers away from the Venkateswara temple, a temple to Vishnu and the largest pilgrimage site in the world. I took the bus up the hill this morning and found myself in a little town with pilgrim guest houses and lots of shops and stalls selling religious and non-religious goods. I was immediately struck by how commercial it seemed and was trying to think if the Vatican was so commercial when I visited. Anyway, after checking my shoes and electric devices, I was herded into the special darshan (worship line) where, before I could enter, I had to fill out a form stating my name, address and religious beliefs (when I wrote ‘none’ in the blank, the man was confused and said, ‘madam, do you not believe even in biology?’) This special line (fast line for a price) cut the 10hr + wait into a manageable 2 hr wait. I spent about 2 minutes looking at the statue of Lord Vishnu and trying to avoid being stampeded. It was a fulfilling day.

Ramoji Film City

I arrived in Hyderabad on Tuesday morning and decided that my first activity would be a tour of Ramoji Film City, the headquarters of the Telugu (the primary language of the state of Andhra Pradesh of which Hyderabad is the capital city) film industry. Although Bollywood (Hindi cinema) is obviously the most famous film industry in India, most states have their own regional cinemas and since people can’t really tour Bollywood, I figured that Ramoji Film City would be the next best thing.

After the hour long drive out to the Film City, the tour started off with everyone (me and Indian tourists) taking a bus tour of the outdoor sets and gardens in the complex. The tour was mostly not in English (I’m not sure if it was in Hindi or Telugu…), but I did pick out keys words like “Shah Rukh Khan” and during one explanation in English, I did learn about a garden where the flowers are changed to match the color of the sari that the heroine wears in the scene, however since women don’t wear saris much in Indian cinema anymore (so sad), the garden is just green with no flowers. This tour was kind of fun, but became kind of absurd because we had to transfer to 4 different buses (bus driver employment program?).

As I wandered around some of the complex designed for tourists, I was kind of disappointed because there was English music playing and I saw statues of Spiderman, Superman, Charlie Chaplin,  and Arnold Schwarzenegger from Terminator, it was obviously not very Indian. I also had just seen a ‘Wild West’ stunt show. Then I went on this ride that was a total Small World rip off, but it was kind of funny because, for some reason, along with Paris, London, New York, and other international cities, they had a Switzerland section with penguins! (and if that wasn’t weird enough they were the size of the mountain goats) and an Oklahoma section (I’ve always though of Oklahoma and London as very similar). The next activity was fun, a scene from the very famous Hindi movie, Sholay, was recreated using audience volunteers. I went on a couple rides (nothing more exciting that you’d find at an American county fair) and went to a dance performance. I got really pumped for the dance performance because they were playing a Hindi song that I knew because the curtain went up, but then most of the dance numbers turned out to be non-Indian, including one to Cotton Eyed Joe that went on for way too long. After the dance performance, I was greeted by a bunch of enthusiastic Indian college boys who, after asking where I was from, started chanting Obama’s name. The last performance that I went to turned out to be a lame juggling show (almost as bad as Laser Vaudeville) aimed at kids and including a remix of Camptown Races that sounded like it had been mixed with We Like to Party by a crack addict. The day at the Film City ended and I went back to the bus. I realize that my account probably makes the day sound kind of terrible, but I enjoyed it for the most part and I just figure that I’m seeing another dimension of India.

Today, I visited the Andhra Pradesh Forest Academy and met with a woman who one of my professors had put me in contact with. I learned a little about resource management programs around Andhra Pradesh and some medicinal plants found in the state.

Tomorrow, I do a breakneck tour of the historical monuments of Hyderabad before catching my night train to a city called Tirupati, south of Hyderabad, also in Andhra Pradesh.

It’s Hard to Leave Hampi (aka Happy in Hampi)

I realized that I did a rubbish (is it obvious that I’ve been a lot of Brits?) job describing anything in my previous post and will embellish, especially since I am still in Hampi.

Like I said before, the area is beautiful and I’ve met some nice kids here. I’ve been bouldering for the past three days and yesterday was kind of neat when I realized that everyone I was climbing with was from a different country (represented where Canada, Mexico, England, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy).  Most of the people I’ve been meeting are at least a couple years out of college and are either trying to figure out what they want do with their lives so are traveling for a few months/a year or they’re people really into climbing and take their vacation time to go to different countries and climb.

I’m staying at this cool guest house that’s surround by a rice paddy on three sides. Outside of the room where I’m on the internet is a mango tree! With green mangoes that tease me because they won’t be ripe for another month. The room I’m staying at is decent (with a mosquito net, quite a few of those around) and is a little more than $4 a night. I’ve been eating most of my meals also at this guest house because they have delicious food. They have low tables with old mattresses around them so in the evenings everyone just sits around and eat and talks and plays chess (I played my first game in like 5 years and won!) or cards or reads or plays guitar (I’ve almost learned Stand By Me which is easy but cool to me). I plan to leave tomorrow for Hyderabad. So much to see in India.

Among the rice paddies

I am writing from a a funky backpacker hotel in the small town of Hampi in the state of Karnataka. I arrived on Tuesday morning and rented a bike and explored the ruins of an empire that ended about 500 years ago that are scattered around the hillsides. The landscape is incredible and I instantly fell in love with the area. The area is full of hills with lots of orange/red boulders and in the valleys there are fields of rice paddy and bananas (and a few other smaller crops). Yesterday, I met some kids staying on the other side of the river from where I was staying and went climbing on boulders with them. Today, I moved over to the other side of the river, did some bouldering, and some exploration.

Week in Bangalore

I have spent the past week in Bangalore. I’ve found Bangalore different from all the other Indian cities and towns I’ve been in so far. It’s been noted that Bangalore is a city that grew too fast (because of the IT boom) and that is evident from both the dreadful traffic, the constant construction, and the multitude of office buildings for many US companies. I’ve enjoyed little things here like seeing what Indian malls and grocery stores are like (I haven’t seen malls in most of the other places).

Other highlights include:

- The ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Conscienous) temple – A relatively modern temple, which was interesting not because it was particularly beautiful, but because of how commercial it was. As they heard you through the temple, there are ample opportunities to buy things (books, cds, vegetarian food, paintings/figures of Krishna). Also, there was one point where I was instructed to put my hand on some flowers and telling a priest (I am uncertain of the correct term here) the names of my family members so he could bless them and when I said Timothy, Margaret and Catherine he looked at me like I was speaking in tongues. I also saw a 20 minute animated feature about how Krishna defeated some serpant (if you’re interested, just youtube ‘Little Krishna’).

- Trying to make Mexican food with they guys from IBM. We actually found beef at a butchers shop, which I felt kind of bad about.  

- Doing some ridiculous things that I would probably  never do in the States because it’d be too expensive. For example, on Friday, I went go-carting for the first time which was like being hooked up to a lawn motor. On Saturday, I met up with one of the girls I met on the weekend trip to Kerala, Liza, and we went to a ‘fish spa,” which is a spa where they have fish that eat the dead skin off your feet and make them nice and smooth.

 

Today (Sunday), I am leaving for the town of Mysore (the red dot on the map of southern India). After a few days in Mysore, I plan on going up to Hampi (the purple dot on the map) before heading to Hyderabad in the state Andhra Pradesh. I hope to keep you all posted on those adventures as well.

 

Response to comments:

- Bangalore is much different from Kolkata, for example: Bangalore has more chain stores, malls, and air conditioned shops; the traffic is much worse as more people have cars or drivers; there seems to be fewer people sleeping on the sidewalks or along the road sides; I haven’t noticed as many temples and small shrines (although this may because Bangalore has sizable Muslim and Christian populations); and fewer animals on the roads. These observations are not comprehensive and it probably varies a lot from neighborhood to neighborhood.

- My sari – The green silk sari that I bought in Kolkata I mailed back to the US. Let’s hope it gets there.

- Temperature – The temperature in Bangalore is quite pleasant because it’s at a higher elevation.

- Feeling like a celebrity – Given the number of photos I’ve taken with random people and the number of handshakes I’ve had with strangers I really do feel like celebrity. It’s really odd because parents frequently urge their children to shake my hand.