Elephant Blessings

In certain Indian temples they have elephants who are trained to bless you once you give them a coin. It's pretty cool:

Awesome India Moments but I'm Pretty Ready to Leave

India is wild. It really is. It's almost always hot, crowded, smelly, inefficient, and the power just sort of cuts out whenever it feels like it. It's really a pretty difficult place to travel and I think if I were in my 40's or 50's it would be too much because even at 22 I'm pretty over it. Now this might just be the awesome heat rash on my back talking but 3 weeks is a good long time here.

India is wild. It's fucking awesome. The culture and temples are amazing. In the west people tangentially acknowledge India as being one of the worlds great civilizations but most people still don't really get it. When you come here and just understand the depth of the culture and just how long it's gone on you really can't help but be absolutely flabbergasted and impressed. Temples people went to worship Shiva in thousands of years ago are being used today for the exact same reason.

People in India are crazy. You literally have to argue with every single autorickshaw driver and merchant who will fleece you for 3-4x the amount you should be paying. Sometimes trying to find people to do stuff is impossible. Yesterday I was looking for a tailor to whip me up some shirts and we went to 4 different places where folks just wouldn't do it by Friday despite obviously not working on anything. Today going to mail something in the post office took 1 hour and a solid 3 blocks of walking in 98 degree weather. 

People in India are crazy. Two days ago we went to get an autorickshaw to go home and met Dhas. Dhas is a Christian and was excited to hear that Felix worked at a school that specializes in Kuttu (a local street theatre performance) and did a dance for us. Then when we got in his auto-rickshaw he got so excited by my camera that he took us to his house, introduced us to his entire family, had us take pictures with them, then took us to 4 separate temples where he tried to convince his brahmin friends to let us take pictures of the Idols which is forbidden. Dhas didn't care since he's a Christian and was just excited to show us India. 

Everyday you're in India you'll definietely be frustrated by something but often enough someone like Dhas comes around and it gets really awesome really fast. For instance on Dhas' street we met Ashwin, the self proclaimed Kung Fu master of the area. Though I'm leaving for Vietnam tomorrow I'm really glad I came here for the last 3 weeks despite the 8-9 times where if I could have hit reset and ended up in Foster City I probably would have.

Dhas Dancing:

Us with Dhas' Family:

Check back with this blog too because I'm gonna put in more pictures and VIDEO!!!!

45-0 + Slow Dog/Slow Lady (Bangalore)

There isn't really much to actually do in Bangalore in terms of sights and stuff but otherwise it's probably the most cosmopolitan/westernish city in India that we've been too. There's KFCs and McDonalds and Nike and Adidas stores up the wazoo. We even went bowling here. Felix beat me bt a solid margin but our scores were really pathetic regardless. I won't put them here but the total was in the 140 ish range. maybe.

Anyways Bangalore has this fucking awesome bar named NASA and it's spaceship themed. The drinks are called like liquid fuel and it's super awesome camptastic inside. Pics to come. We had a few pitchers and then went outside and were like damn it's 4pm no a sunday and we are buzzing.

I also got this totally sweet Doraemon fake zippo!

Our train got in around 6 am yesterday and as a result of hotels' 24 hour check out policy we were kicked to the curb today at 7am. Nothing here opens until 8:30 or really 9:00 so we got to do some pretty sweet curb sitting and went to this one coffee shop there the soundtrack included a new vengaboys song we've never heard, 6 different 50 cent songs, and an uncensored version of "My Neck, My Back" by Khia. Mind you this WAS ALL AT LIKE 7:45 AM!!!! Madness.

Anyways yesterday besides getting drunk at NASA we went to an italian cafe with a lot of workers from Nagaland which is in northeastern India and is essentially southeast asia but owned by india for strategic purposes. What this means is there's a lot of Southeast Asian people in Bangalore but they're Indian by nationality.

We went to go look for this pretty famous japanese restaurant named Harima and when we finally found it at 5pm we realized they didn't open for another hour. Luckily we were able to chill at a cafe downstairs and we watched the film "Taken" in it's entirety. I've seen it before and watching Liam Neeson own EVERYONE never really gets boring. When we did get to the restaurant it was mad fancy and had all these indian dudes in japanese waiter outfits which was sorta funny. we got Agedashi Tofu, Kaarage, Katsudon, and an Okonomiyaki. Generally when you get foreign food in India it only vaguely resembles what it's supposed to be. The japanese food at Harima was definetely the real deal but of course was not as good as what you could get at home. Harima was also my first experience with the poop hose. Sure this is TMI but if you're reading this you know how real I keep it. Anyways I guess the hose is cool. It's really not that uncomfortable or anything but when i twisted the nozzle it loosed at the bottom and sort of sprayed water on me/everything else. For me the jury is still out on he hose but I plan on exploring it more.

We also stopped at this Jimi Hendrix themed bar and it was basically full of random rock album covers/pictures that included Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, and one of the guys from Pink Floyd. They also played the video and song of Stairway from the song remains the same.

VH1 Classics here shows the most random videos. We saw Karma Chameleon by Culture Club, Video killed the radio star, love shack, and and Whitney Houston's "i'm every woman". Bizzaro.

Anyways to explain the title you have to realize that Indian bars are not like American ones. They're literally just full of dudes. Like all dudes. Like when we were in NASA it was a ratio of 45 dudes to 0 girls. YEA DUDES. And literally every bar is pretty much like this.... The slow dog/slow lady thing is from when we were walking around this morning sort of delerious from being kicked out at 7am we saw this dog walking around slowly and felix said slow dog and we both immediately launched into a rendition of "Slow Ride" by Foghorn but with the words "slow dog" instead. Then we saw a slow lady and did the same thing.

So to end, we are in a coffee shop with internet called "coffee day" and they technically opened at 8:30 but in america this would mean people setting up from at least 7:30. Here it means they got here at 8:30 and still aren't totally opened yet. Like it's 10:00 AM, a full hour and a half from opening and they're still setting up. Indiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

BY BOAT OR BY GOAT I WILL HAVE MY PRIZE (Hampi)

Look how excited Felix is for ruins!

Hampi is this pretty awesome small town in central India that used to be the capital of one of the major empires. It's full of amazingly awesome ruins and really really really insane rock formations. It's also got lots and lots of monkeys, cows, lizards, dogs, and one elephant! Hampi also had by far the most power outages I've had to deal with in India. Normally there's been 1-2 outages a day in most cities, Hampi had 6-8.

The best outage, if best if really the word, was out first night when a storm blew down a tree and we literally lost power from 8pm until around noon the next day. You might think "that's not so bad, i'll just light some candles and it'll be dandy!" WELL YOU'RE FUCKING WRONG. IT IS HOT AS SHIT IN HAMPI AND WHEN YOU HAVE NO POWER THE ONE FUCKING CELING FAN DOESN'T SPIN AND YOU HAVE ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE WORST NIGHT EVER I HAVEN'T STOPPED SWEATING IN 15 HOUR DAYS. Yea, it sucked. I had to sleep with a wet towl on me just to not be hot enough to go insane. A lot of people in the neighborhood slept outside but there's mad mosquitos there too so it seems like a bad idea for my Idon'twanttogetmalaria plans.

Despite the rough start Hampi is pretty cool. I went to the river in the morning to watch them wash the temple elephant (her name is Lakshmi!) and the whole village was pretty much there bathing and washing clothes and stuff. It was a really cool scene and lots of people and naked babies just chillin in the river. The grown men were still having water fights and the brahmans were sitting around meditating. I learned two things that morning: it takes over two hours to wash an elephant and it's crazy how many peoples lives still revolve around a river for their water usage.

We rented a scooter and walked a lot and saw all kinds of crazy ruins and old temples and stuff. There were a few super awesome statues that stuck out like one of the bull Nandi who's Shiva's mount and looks really like homer and a really awesome ganesh one and this really great one of Lakshmi Narasimha which is one of Vishnu's incarnations where he has the head of a Lion. 

Bull:

Vishnu Lion:

The main temple there is called Vittala temple and it's super old, super big, and super awesome. We took a boat there which is a pretty short ride but we got to sit in this awesome circular boat and were lucky enough to be joined by two fucking awesome looking pilgrims who chilled with us and asked for cigarettes. They were totally nuts looking. 

Boat:

Pilgrims:

Vittala Temple:

On the way back we figured we'd walk but since this is India there is no clear path and we ended up basically having to boulder our way home. There was a herd of goats near us who we passed and climbed some difficult ish rocks. As we stopped to catch our breath the goats trotted by and clearly took an easier path than we had. After that we figured we should probably just follow goats since they knew what was going on and they pretty much lead us back. It was pretty cool and the inspiration for the title of this blog post.

Thank You Goats

Anyways a few quick hits on Hampi:
1. We stayed at the Gopi hotel that is clearly building an empire on one of the blocks. They owned a convenience stand, two buildings of rooms, a rooftop cafe, and an internet cafe.
2. there was a ridiculous stoner ass bakery with blacklights and stuff that had crazy blacklight posters of ganesh and shiva. the food there was quite good for the most part, great pizza and decent fallafel but their attempt at a burrito was the saddest thing ever. Just picture lasagna with beans tossed in. it was one of those "have you ever even googled burrito?"
3. chopsuey is weird friend noodle stuff in sweet and sour sauce. It's not good.
4. Some ant decided to crawl in my shoe and bite me for a while. it really sucked and hurt like the dickens!
5. there's this other restaurant called the Mango Tree that has a really nice view of the river and pretty good food. it also had a cockroach the size of my thumb just chilling nearby.
6. Everywhere in hampi serves this lemon mint juice thing. basically a virgin mohito and the most refreshing thing ever.

Mumbai Redux: There were some funny parts

Now that the horrific night of the crazy bus is behind me I'd like to add an addendum to the Mumbai leg of our journey. There were some sort of funny/bizzare parts.

One cab driver came up to us and was really really really trying to get us to take a tour with him. He mentioned a few wierd things like that he would take us to a really really poor muslim home and that we could take pictures of 10 people living in 4x6" room or something like that. He said it would be like Slumdog Millionaire. He also said he'd take us to a street nicknamed Fucklane Rd (notice the redundancy) where we would meet boys that looked like girls (ladyboys for the unitiated...) and that they looked like Michael Jackson.

Cab Driver:

Lay Accross My Big BRAAAAAASSSSSSS Bed - Our Trip to Goa

First off, let me explain the title. We went to this restaurant called Stone House and there was this singer who was taking requests and singing crappy romance songs really slow and poorly and in an amusing way due to his accent. When he played "Lay Lady Lay" by Bob Dylan, a song I really like, he butchered it and put all the emphasis on the word "brass". It was painful. Anyways.

Goa is this state in west India that used to be run by the Portuguese until after Indian Independence and is this bizzaro beach state that feels a bit like Santa Cruz and is famous for being a super party spot. At least in the 90's or at least during peak seasons. Unfortunately for Felix and I, it's 2010, not peak season, and I had some stomach issues the whole time.

We stayed in this cool house called Villa Ludovici. Our hosts were this Indian/Portuguese family (their last name was Gonzalez!) and they were suuuuper nice. They had 3 dogs, one named Rex who was skittish, Shalom (named by a previous guest who was Israeli), and Goldy who was fat and incredibly friendly. There was also this dude there who was Indian and had lived in the UK for 18 years and was now just teaching surfing and kayaking in Florida. In a random note, one of the guests was from Moscow and moved to England, specifically Hastings where the folks from Felix's mom's side of the family reside. I've been there and it's a raaaaandom ass place for a Russian to go live.

Breakfast At Villa Ludovici:

Goldy, The House's Dog:

Speaking of Russians, Goa is fucking full of them. I guess they just come here to do what old russian people do which is sit in the sun, get gross leathery tan, and drink. My dad said they're probably all "new russians" which means new money mobsters. I wouldn't fuck with them and neither should you. One of their wives was def doing topless sunbathing and I kid you not, they were over a foot apart. It was really weird. In other news the restaurants there all have russian menus and since russian (and western) beach wear is much skimpier than indian women who pretty much just wear the same saris they do everywhere, indian dudes just sort of stand on the beach and stare creepily. 

Dudes be starin:

We stayed in the town of Candolim whose beach features beer shack after beer shack after beer shack. It would have been a great place to get sloshed and sit at the beach but my stomach wasn't having it. In an amusing note, the shacks have bathrooms which are just four walls, no roof, and sort of a toilet. It sounds weird but there's something definitely soothing about hearing the ocean sounds while you do your business. Candolim's greatest feature is the River Princess. I giant fucking ore liner boat that got stuck 10 years ago about 100ft off shore. It's enormous and if you like irony and are sarcastic like Felix and I you will find it awesome. 
Otherwise it's a huge eyesore and has actually effected the erosion patterns on the coast so parts of the beach have these 40-60 ft long burlap tubes of sand labeled "geotubes" to shore up the shore. Apparently the Goan government dragged it's feet to take it out and tried for the first time in 2005. By then the boat was too rusty to drag out and now it's stuck. Indian judges have declared it a state disaster and no real hope is in sight. It can't be good for the environment.

It says" DMD Moscow":

In another amusing story we went to this popular beach called Vagator and sat down for a beer and these two ladies came up trying to sell us shirts. They literally just sat down in the sand and talked for like 15 minutes then really turned the pressure on. One had these silly shirts that I sort of liked so I bought 2 and then the 2nd one Sandra was unhappy because I didn't by anything from here and really turned the thumbscrews up. Saying that it wasn't fair and we were making her sad. It took sooooo loooong to get her to go and right after she left, only to come back for one last try later, another girl apparently named Pandra sat down and tried her best. Pandra chatted for a while and we were like we have no money go ask the russians and she said they were bad people and never bought anything. Pandra also took 20 minutes at least just to say we were making her sad before she finally left.

Anyways a few quick hits:
1. the meals were all super forgettable. really all pretty w/e.
2. Our last night was in Margao which is a transport hub for the beach part of Goa. They had cable with a lot of english channels and we got our discovery channel on.
3. On the train to Hampi (where I am now) we had no food besides hobnobs and we ate the whole box. If you're not familiar with hobnobs they are this wonderful british oat biscuit and you really must try them.

Mumbai, it's ok, I guess...

So I'm not gonna lie. Sort of over India at the moment and feeling a tad homesick. Backpacking here is no easy task, the heat, stomach parties, and constant haggling are definitely tiring. India is just full of constant arguing because we're foreigners. Everyone is trying to rip us off and it's really exhausting when it's happening 10+ times a day. It wasn't really as much of an issue in Tamil Nadu or Tirupati, but in Hyderabad and Mumbai it really hit it's stride.

Anyways. Mumbai is pretty metropolitan compared to the other places we've gone, we were in the pretty touristy area called Colaba and it had this one main strip where people just sell crap, from saris, to telescopes, astrolabes, compases, t-shirts, and bootleg cd/dvds. They all come up to you and if you don't have your strong scowl face on they will just follow you. There's also lots of dudes trying to sell you hash which is more annoying than it was in Amsterdam or Barcelona because here they follow you for a while. We learned to walk on the otherside of the street which is a bit less intense.

Our hotel was kinda cool but our bathroom was in the hallway and was literally the hottest and most humid place i've had to be in. It was literally insane. You would go in there to wash your hands and come out covered in sweat. On the plus side we had AC and cable and watched two fantastic movies. Well actually they were fantastic at all, they were pretty much the worst movies I've ever seen. Michael Jackson's "Moonwalker" where you get to see Joe Pescii sell out and "Torque" which is probably the worst movie I have seen in my whole life. It's basically the Fast and the Furious but with sport bikes. Sport bikes and Ice Cube. I want those two hours of my life back so badly but they are gone forever...

Anyways Mumbai Highlights:
1. Gateway to India - Big fucking gate by the pier. Pretty cool. There's tons of dudes there with nikon D40's trying to take your picture. They would come up to me and I'd be like "my camera is better than yours, why would i want a picture". They generally conceded. There were also tons of dudes with these giant balloons, like 4 ft long adn 1.5 ft wide. They were trying to sell them to us and I really wanted to be like "why the fuck woudl i want a giant fucking balloon? I'm an adult."

One of many Balloon Guys:

2. Elephanta Island - No elephants... but lots of monkeys, donkeys, and cows!!! There used to be a statue of an elephant there but it's since been moved. There is this really awesome cave temple with this really amazing 25 ft tall bust of Shiva with his eyes closed. It's mad huge, mad serene, and mad crazy that it was built on this island which is about an hour by boat away. I can't imagine how long it took to build. There's tons of monkeys too and they just sort of jack peoples food. The locals and Indian tourists hate them. I, on the other hand, think they're funny but they haven't tried to rob me yet.

Sign at Elephanta Island:

Amazing 3 Headed Shiva Statue:

Monkeys:

3. Cool, though non AC museum! We saw lots of really rad Indian and Tibetan art work. It was pretty amazing but rediculously hot to the point that you couldn't really enjoy it.

4.Old Ass Synagogue - there's one in Mumbai that was built in 1884. Madness.

Yea, 

5. Crazy Seafood! - I sort of overate on the seafood side. Because the exchange rate is pretty good you can get amazing seafood at reasonable prices. Like a whole crab for 12 bucks. Or a whole pomfret and and another curried fish for $15. Needless to say this gave me a pretty solid stomach ache that, to my chagrin, I'm still carrying with me.

Which leads to why last night was sort of one of the worst nights of my life. So in India they super overbook trains. Like up to 300 spots. And somehow me and Felix couldn't even get in while being #5 and #6 so we opted for a night bus. In the pictures it's really nice and has chairs that recline in to beds and a nice bathroom and stuff. The bus, in reality, was like the difference in McDonalds ads and how their food actually looks. It was grungy and there were not reclining chairs, just a 4 x 6" cubby that had to fit the two of us and our bags. To make it WAY MORE AWESOME there was no bathroom either. Remember my awesome stomache ache? yea that made the ride super awesome. It took two bathroom stops, one at 10PM and one at 5AM and they were both gnarly Indian Truck stop bathrooms. To make the trip more uncomfortable the AC was either really cold or non-existent and our cubby was right above the engine making certian parts of it burning hot. The road here was also pretty bumpy and insanely windey making for sweet bouts of motion sickness. We made it to Goa but last night was one of the more uncomfortable nights of my life to be sure.

Goa is ok so far, it's a beachy area and we're living in this old house which is chill but non AC. I'll let ya'll know how it's going in a bit!

So Hyderabad It's Good

Currently Fee and I are chilling at a internet cafe in Hyderabad trying to burn the 5 hours until our night train to Mumbai that I'm not super enthused about. Night trains are totally the most efficient use of time but they're sort of tiring and dirty. Realistically I know when I look back at this trip I'm really not going to remember the night trains so it's not a big deal I suppose.

Hyderabad is pretty cool. It's the capital of Andra Pradesh and used to be a big Muslim city and it's got a bunch of really cool mosques and stuff which is what we did day one here. First we went to the Charminar (sounds like charmander!!!! fire spin!!!) which is this big like square thing in the middle of this big road that looks like a Muslim Arc de Triumphe. It's pretty rad, but the stairs going up to the top aren't lit and are super narrow and inconsistently spaced. Near there is a mosque whose gates are made using clay from Mecca. Since Felix had a bag he had to wait outside while I walked around inside. It was cool looking but the ground is covered in pigeon shit and you aren't allowed to wear shoes. In India at major sites random dudes are around and they act as tour guides/really annoying dudes who follow you around saying things in unintelligble english then ask for money. It sort of sucks. When I got out Felix said he the dude he was chatting with got punched in the face by his friend and it was mad awkward so we both left.

Near there is a bazaar where it'll be a block of solid bangle shops, then a block of sari shops, then a block of metal stuff, then a block of rugs. It's insane, it's like free market economics don't work here because there's literally 30 of each store selling the exact same shit and they're all next door to each other. It literally makes no sense. In the bazaar we also saw a giant goat with floppy bunny ears. It was super weird. We also went to this palace type place called chowmallah and saw a bunch of old stuff. All pretty w/e. On the way to the restaurant we were going to have dinner at people kept coming up to us to try to sell us bangles. Why the fuck would we want tons of plastic bangles?! It defies reason. Luckily the place we had dinner (the next day too) Hotal Shadab, has the BEST BIRIYANI EVER. Biriyani is basically rice and meat i think baked together. It came with amazing yogurt and curry sauce on the side. It was def life-changing.

Chowmallah:

Our Sweet Chowmallah Photos:

 insane looking goat:

BEST BIRIYANI EVER:

Our street has "bars" that we figured we'd hit up that night. We pre-gamed on some Tullamore Dew Whiskey that I brought Fee from the states and went out. The bars were really weird and un-chill. Some dude flicked his cigarette, probably intentionally, at me. We took the hint and went back to the room to drink more. The next morning sucked. Being hungover in India is the absolute worst. It's like the hottest and noisiest place in the world. True misery was experienced.

Day 2 we went sort of out of town to this place called Fort Golconda which is this enormous castle. It's straight up Helms Deep/The Two Towers status. Epic is a pretty played out word right now but it's super epic. Pics will be up prob at the end of the month, maybe sooner but iunno. Anyways it took about 2-3 hours to traverse the whole castle as we were periodically stopped for families to take their pictures with us. I think since it isn't tourist season and most foreign tourists only go to Dehli, Kolkata, Agra, and Mumbai we're quite the rarity. It's been a week and I've only seen 4 foreigners. After wards we checked out these crazy tombs nearby that all look like the palace in Aladdin but like miniature. And by miniature I still mean at least 4 stories tall. Then it was back to the biriyani place for round two and finally we went to this place in the travel book for some hookah.

Fort Golconda:

The place is called Mocha and it honestly feels like something that would exist in LA, it's probably the closest Hyderabad has to Habibi's in Westwood. It's overpriced (still cheap by US standards) and trendier than the sort of shit me and felix normally do. They have wraps, paninis, crustinis, poutine, and a huge selection of coffee and desserts. It's clearly where the Hyderabad young rich go. We got one of their premium hookahs, a chickin panini, fries with curry, coffee, and a pink lemonade and it came out to about $16 US. To put that in perspective, today our lunch at what must have been one of the fancier places in Hyderabad was about $8. What made Mocha redic was the soundtrack It was this huge mix of everything that was popular from 2002-2004. Each song wasn't played for more than 10 seconds either. Here's the list:

1. nookie
2. where is the love
3. seed 2.0
4. in da club
5. this love
6. sunday morning
7. yeah
8. bootylicious
9. milkshake
10. next episode
11. stan
12. we belong together
13. my boo
14. you don't know my name
15. it wasn't me
16. 19-2000
17. gasolina
18. what's love got to do with it
19. holla back girl
20. 1 2 step
21. work it
22. the reason
23. clocks
24. tempted to touch
25. what's my name
26. my perogative
27. how you remind me

As you can see, high school in a nutshell.

Today we checked out some random giant buddah statue in the river, think statue of liberty but with buddah and not nearly as big. Apparently when they were towing it out to the river it sank and took two years to recover. I personally wish i saw that instead... At the lame-o kids park type thing it was at there was a whole class of MBA students, 9 of which wanted their picture taken with us. We feel like celebrities! sort of...

Giant Buddha:

Anywayssss Mumbai tomorrow!

Awesome Busride and GOOOOVINDAAAHHHH (Tirupati and Tirumala)

OUR AWESOME PICTURE FROM TIRUMALA (note-Indian people do not smile in photos so neither did we):

We've now left Tamil Nadu and the awesome kids at the school. Balagi who is a total G wrote me and felix letters. I'll take a pic of them and post them up later. He did the thing where he spelled out Felix's name and had the X stand for X-Men. Awesome.

We took the 3 hour bus ride to Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh which was amazingly tiring. It's not too hot on the bus since all the windows are opened but it was hardly airconditioned bliss. What made the ride really tough is that when you drive in India the onus is on the driver to be noticed. So it means EVERYONE is HONKING ALL THE FUCKING TIME and when you sit at the front of the bus it's literally ear-splittingly loud. Like loud in the way that I never get headaches period, much less from noise, and I was starting to go insane. The bus had two major airhorns, one low and one high so he could mix it up rhythmically, and could have one or both pressed. So literally in India it looks like there's no speed limits or traffic cops so you basically go as fast as you can and can pass into incoming traffic if you think you can make it. The bus was literally honking constantly. It was insane. It didn't get better till I put in my iPod during the last quarter of the journey and the earbuds acted as sort of plugs. Lesson well learned.

Views from the Bus:

We got into Tirupati went to the hotel Felix booked. Apparently reservations don't mean a whole lot here, especially because he only asked for Felix's first name. In other words we had to go find a different place which wasn't that hard. The room we got was down the street and had air conditioning which was only partially effective since one of the windows was broken and wouldn't close. Not the most auspicious start to our journey but mehh.

Tirupati exists basically as a city to support the tourism for Tirumala which is this giant temple complex at the top of this mountain 12km away. Tirumala is actually the #1 pilgrimage site in the world. More people go there than Mecca, Jereusalem, or the Vatican. It's actually able to offer free housing and food for the pilgrims too!

The bus up and back is pretty gnarly. The mountain is super steep so it's basically hairpin after hairpin as you wind you way up. The horrific squeal of the breaks was not confidence inspiring either. One of the things about Tirumala is a lot of pilgrims do a ceremonial offering of their hair so you see whole families with totally shaved heads. Men, women, kids of all ages. The main thing to do in Tirumala is to go to Sri Venkateswara Temple. If you get in the regular line it takes 6-8 hours to get in. If you take the pricier line it's 2-3 hours. If you're a foreigner with a passport it takes about an hour. Lucky us. We had to buy the traditional male skirt thingies (dhoti) and leave our shoes and bags and camera at the security checkpoint so sorry no photos of inside. We also had to write our religion and then swear our allegiance to Lord Venkateswara who is an avatar of Vishnu so I guess me and Felix found religion here.

Once in line it's literally a flood of people and if you were to jump you might literally be carried along portions of the journey in what I feel is the closest experience I will ever feel to being salmon. The way folks push to get in would start huge fights in America. During the pushing and really the whole experience people will yell "Goooooooovindaaahhhhh!!!!!" and once some one yells it, everyone else returns with their own "Goooooovindaaaahhhh!!!!"" I have no idea what this means. Once inside, the pushing continues through the main temple in the center. It's totally insane though. The whole thing is pretty much made of gold. It's one of those things where you're like how does western exceptionalism exist when there's this giant temple made of gold on top of a giant mountain and it's older than pretty much most stuff in the West. In the main section sort of far in is the statue that people are there to see. It's said that Lord Venkateswara will grant wishes too! That particular room is so crowded that there's paid staff along the edges whose whole job is to just push you through. Once again because I'm foreign they stopped me, asked me if I'd seen God and let me look for an extra 4 seconds instead of just being shoved through. Once you're out of the main area you're sort of free to wander until the you decide to leave where afterwards you get to get into another sweet bottleneck and push your way through.

The caged line for the temple:

Outer wall of the temple:

Hella Pilgrims:

At the end of the day we got on our train to Hyderabad which is where I'm typing from. We took a night train which was sort of a trippy experience. It's clean ish and has AC which is super clutch. We flipped the coin so I had to take the top bunk making going to the bathroom at night a huge pain in the ass.

So far in Hyderabad the main highlight as been eating meat which I haven't had since Thursday. Literally my longest stint at a vegetarian ever but meat is hard to find in South India.

8 hour Kattaikkutu Marathon Night

Since Felix works at a theatre school type thing that doesn't performance street art, last night was one of their performances and we went to watch. Kattaikkuttu is like street theatre usually playing out a scene from one of the epic Indian poems like the Mahabarata or the Ramayana and sometimes tied into various current events.

Last night's performance was a scene from the Mahabarata where Karna, one of the righteous Pandava brothers realizes he's on the wrong side of the war and tells his wife he's going to die before he's slain by Arjuna. What's insane is these performances start at 10PM and end at 6AM. 8 fucking hours. How crazy is that? The only thing I can do for 8 hours is sleep. It's not like these are easy performances because the actors are constantly jumping and spinning for damn near the whole thing. It's pretty cool but since I don't know Tamil it gets pretty hard to follow pretty fast. It's also not rude at all to go to sleep since it goes literally all night. It's nuts that the actors are all 10-20 years old. In the US people wouldn't really let kids and young folks do stuff like that. The whole time there's a band and a chorus playing too. The costumes are super elaborate and overall it's a nuts atmosphere. We were in this other small village in Tamil Nadu and it looked liked literally the whole village came out. 

I couldn't really last more than 2 hours. I don't know Tamil and it was hot and crowded and the dude next to me was spitting up a storm. I ended up sleeping in the bus we took from the school for most of it. It was still an amazing experience and I'm glad I went.

A few awesome notes

1. Since we're in the country side felix's whiteness and my asianess are still incredibly amusing to everyone. We literally have a crowd of kids following us everywhere. Felix told them Jackie Chan was my uncle and that the undertaker is his dad. BTW wrestling is still really really popular in India, or at least in Tamil Nadu.

2. Some of the adults are just as amused by us. One of them came by and sort of rubbed my chin. Apparently it's a sign of affection? It's definitely awkward.

3. The lighting for the whole thing was some dude on the roof connecting wires to the power lines. Seemed insanely dangerous but nothing happened so iunno

4. Really young kids sort of go around unsupervised. This 2 year old was just walking around during one of the periodic blackouts and i really wanted to be like "CAN SOME ONE WATCH THIS FUCKING KID ARE YOU KIDDING ME?"

5. Tamils have this head nod that means "ok" or "yes" but it basically looks like they're tilting they're head side to side to say "no" or "whatever".  Since I had my DSLR everyone wanted to see the pictures I was taking so I'd take a shot and they'd just walk behind me to look. When I'd look at them after they'd do the head shake of approval but it really looked like they were going "mehhhh"

6. Kids love having their picture taken. It's literally the #1 request I get. Then they look at it and laugh and giggle and ask for another one.

7. Since they're maybe a double digits of foreigners who watch kattaikkutu a year they treat us like guests of honor and just kick people off the floor so we can sit. It feels pretty weird. In other news folks just sort of pee and spit wherever. the guy i was sitting next to hocked a gnarly loogie and i decided to get up and walk around

8. In the US when people are talking about you they try to do it discreetly. In Tamil Nadu, especially in the countryside they will just be in groups like 3 feet away pointing at you and talking to each other in Tamil. It's sort of weird but it doesn't feel rude and everyone is insanely nice all the time.

We're heading out from the school today to start our journey in earnest. Tirupathi is next. Stay tuuuuneeeeeddddddd.

ALSO some pics are on FB, not of last night but stuff in general. It's a pain posting them to this blog so just go there. If we're not friends on facebook and you're reading this then that's sort of weird and maybe I don't want you seeing the photos.

Village Kids Pre Kuttu:

Pre Kuttu Ritual:

Kids Getting Ready:

The Buffoons:

Spinning:

Arjuna: