People in India like their temples. And the bottoms of their feet are made of fiberglass.
We started our day by traveling out to Shravanabelagola, which houses a 1000-year-old Jain temple. Before we got there, we visited a small sugar cane village along the road. Children came up to the window, and I had heard that they like pens, so I took a few of the spare ones out of my backpack and dropped them down. After that it was like a feeding frenzy—a whole bunch of kids came to my window until I had given away almost all of my pens. They would do a writing gesture as a way of asking for a pen. I’ve got this great picture of a girl who’s holding one of the pens I gave out in one hand while she’s signaling for a pen in the other. As we were walking around the village we got to take pictures of and with more children. It was a great visit because it was so far away from the city, where everybody wants something from you. Here, these kids had very little concept of money (pens were apparently their currency), and they seemed more genuinely excited just to have us around. Which meant that we could enjoy them a lot more rather than saying no (or “nahi”) all the time. I wonder what’s the farthest distance these children have traveled from that village.
When we got to the temple, we had to deposit our shoes and go up only in our socks. About a third of the way up the incredibly long stairs, I decided I should acculturate myself and go barefoot. It was a pretty hot day, but all the Indian people I saw (even small children) were barefoot. I found that it really wasn’t that bad, but there were a few problem spots where I would have to find some shade to keep from being really uncomfortable.
The temple itself was impressive, to say the least. There was a giant monolithic statue at the top that was about 60 feet high, and there were ancient carvings all over the place.
Yesterday I made a reference or two to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but I stepped it up today. Beth and I made a few references to the movie, but Zach was stuck in the Last Crusade. We need to straighten him out.
Today right before lunch Will Reale bought what he calls a “cocolin,” a two-stringed violin made from a coconut, for 60 rupees. The amazing thing was that I left the bus and went straight to the restaurant, and he came up a couple minutes later and was already playing the thing really well.
Later on Sam bought a drum and Matt Norris bought a flute, and they started playing songs from the back of the bus. At one point I heard different sides of the bus yelling, “India!” and “China!” I later found out that the song was called “India-China Cage Match” and posed the very valid question, “Who would win a cage match between India and China?”
The other two temples we visited were pretty similar and had a lot of the same amazingly intricate sculptures lining the walls. During the first one, the tour guide was going slightly overboard touting all of the historical accomplishments of the people who built the temples. He pointed out what could be construed as a curly wig and claimed that this was where the British probably got the idea for the way their judges dress, and he made a couple other claims as well. At one point I said, “Next they’re going to say that they invented the space shuttle.” Sure enough, at one point there was a carving of people with these roundish domes on their heads, and he said, “It looks just like the helmets that astronauts wear.”
If there’s one question that keeps popping up over and over, it’s “Is Shinji okay?” Our most independent companion has managed to be the subject of more than one water cooler conversation, though it’s not really all his fault. Here’s a chronology:
| Day 1: Shinji shows up at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport with two small carry-ons, each of which was smaller than my backpack. People started talking about him, wondering how he could fit all his clothes, plus the laptop he brought, in such a small space. I said that surely he had checked all of his bags and we just didn’t see them, but I was wrong. He’s got everything in a space I probably couldn’t fit two days’ worth of clothes. Day 2: Shinji walks into a glass door. I think I was the first one who saw him after he walked straight into a door at the hotel, causing a big lump above his right eyebrow. Since then, everyone has asked him how he’s doing and telling him that it’s starting to look a lot better. Day 3: Shinji knocks over a railing at the Citizen Hotel. This one was just unbelievably unfortunate. There was an old wood railing between our patio and the beach, and Shinji happened to put a little too much weight on the wrong spot, causing a whole section of it to fall off. Day 5: On our plane ride to Bangalore, Shinji got a hold of something really hot. I heard something going on across the aisle, and the first thing I saw was Shinji going through all these gyrations to get rid of whatever was causing the burning in his mouth. The second thing I saw was Sam sitting next to him doing his darndest to keep from cracking up. Shinji would fill his mouth with water and move his head back vigorously, and he made some pretty uncomfortable faces. I should admit that I let out a giggle or two once I saw all the commotion Shinji was making. Day 9 (today): Shinji was pretty sick. Now, a lot of us have gotten sick sometime over the course of the trip, but Shinji was turning green. |
The food of the day is the little caramel/chocolate candies I got at a little shop in Hasan. They weren’t very good, but they were two for a rupee. Second prize goes to Thumbs Up cola, which also wasn’t very good.
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