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