India - Day 5 - Mathura
Day five started off in Agra with us attempting to use our complimentary breakfast to find that we'd have to go down to the dining room, and of the three choices offered, only one option was allowed.
Once again I had both my bread and Emily's, along with the same odd jam.
We headed out and on the road, and spent the next three hours or so traveling to Mathura, the birthplace of Krishna.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathura
I'm going to pause here and state that I know fuck and all about Krishna, about the only things touching on it that I'd experienced were Airplane!, and the chorus from My Sweet Lord. Needless to say, I was looking forward to a lesson as to what he was all about.
Mr. Singh stopped along the way, so that we could dash across traffic to get a picture of a giant statue of Durga and Hanuman that towers over an ashram. No clue what that was about, but it was impressive.
We also got lost along the way, and Mr. Singh asked us for the information on the hotel we were going to, and called them. Then we met up with a dude on a dirtbike, and followed him for a bit through dirt roads to our hotel. Mathura had an odd feeling of emptiness compared to the rest of the cities in India I'd seen.
There we found a large hotel complex, gated, manicured lawns, and still under construction. We walked into the reception, and while checking in were informed that we were the first guests of the new hotel. Felt all kinds of special, though through the rest of our stay there were the periodic brown-outs that I'm guessing were due to the complex still being under construction.
Mr. Singh indicated that we should rest for a while before heading out again, as the temples weren't opening until later, so Emily and I got settled in a nice hotel room and enjoyed the air conditioning. After which we went downstairs, met up with Mr. Singh, and asked if we could stop somewhere for lunch.
Ended up at another hotel with a gate and fence, though lower than ours, and topped with shards of broken glass. Tried not to stare at that too much, and instead enjoyed my first ever southern Indian style cuisine. Best meal I'd had there. Imagine, if you will, Ethiopian food, except good. While eating it we enjoyed watching the two waiters have a battle of channel changers, but mostly what stayed on the TV was some fantastic looking piece of Bollywood about a fistfight with a bald dude in a post-apocalyptic exploding oil field.
After that we drove a short distance, parked by a bunch of cows, and waited for a moment while a dude that looked like living beef jerky came up and said that he'd be our guide. His English wasn't so hot, but he gestured at Emily's purse, camera strap, glasses, and my glasses, and said something that I was sure I misheard. See, my brain sometimes tries to put things together in ways that I'll find more interesting to hear, so what I got was "Monkeys are dangerous." Turns out this wasn't one of the times my brain was lying to me.
We then proceeded on a foot tour through Mathura. On the way our guide would inform us that Mathura had a ton of temples (something to the effect of: if one were to visit a temple a day, you wouldn't be done after three months), and would occasionally try to teach us phrases in Hindi. For about ten minutes I knew how to say 'narrow road.' Why he felt the need to share this information, I have no idea.
About a block away from the car was the Govind Dev temple, which was breathtaking, and covered in monkeys. We walked inside, after checking our shoes with a dude at the door, and approached a sort of recessed altar area. I was waiting some sort of explanation as to what was going on with this temple, it's history, what we were seeing, but none of that really got touched on. Or if it was, I missed it. I asked about the defaced wall carvings, as I assumed that it was another case of a Hindu/Muslim conflict and was informed that it was done by "a very dirty man." After that we walked outside, around the periphery of the temple, and through back alleys towards the next temple: the house that Krishna was born in.
It's a surprisingly small complex covered in tiles, and our guide took the time to point out the names of all sorts of different countries on them, from which visitors came. Then our guide pointed us to a basin, and said that we needed to wash our hands before coming in. After running water over my hands, I looked for something to dry them with, and seeing no towels, spotted a nearby tree. I figured that rather than have the water drip on the ground, I'd give it to the plant. So I flicked my hands vigorously towards it, until I noticed our guide and the priests around us giving me the hairy eye. Then our guide explained that the tree was supposed to have been around since Krishna's time. Yup, that's me, making friends everywhere.
We started in to the building, finding a room where women with no families spent all day chanting, in exchange for being fed and clothed. Guess it beats the hell our of being beggars. Eventually we found ourselves in the main chamber where it was explained how we should approach the altar, and the priest attending it. We did so, in the deferential matter intended, and found ourselves getting a sales pitch.
Y'see, in every town I'd been in, we'd been handed over to merchants to be sold things. Rugs on three occasions, cloth on two, marble working once, a jewelers, and a leather worker's. Here, in the last city I was visiting, I was about done with salesmen, and figured I was safe in a place whose most famous thing appeared to be temples and Hare Krishnas.
So, the priest explained to us that there were various payment plans, one of which would get our name chanted by the ladies as part of their daily prayers, one which would get our name on a plaque, another which would get prayers said for us and our families, but we could give any amount we felt comfortable with, and that'd be cool.
I reached into my wallet, puled out all the cash I had, handed it over, and sat back. The priest looked at me said "Four dollars?" in an unbelieving tone. Priests: regardless of religion, country, color, or creed, they really don't change much.
I was pretty much done with him at that point. There was more talk. They gave us rock candy, had us hold some flowers up to a statue, chant something in Hindi, and then we were on our way.
We then walked a few block to another temple. Now that we were wearing flowers, the people of Mathura would say 'Hare Krishna' when we went past. We stopped outside the complex, where it was explained that in the pool below us, a crocodile and an elephant had once fought, and the elephant had won. I waited for the reason for the fight, a moral, how it changed someone's outlook causing society to start a particular practice, but apparently the elephant winning was the end of the story.
The rest of the day is somewhat of a blur. Mostly because I started having an unfortunate biological reaction to something. Emily pointed out that, on the plus side, I could now always win a round of Never Have I Ever.
We managed to visit two more temples before I had to throw in the towel.
The first was the Pagel Baba Temple, which has an amazingly odd thing: a series of animatronic displays in a man made tunnel under the temple. They tell the story of the life of Krishna. Speaking of the life of Krishna, we still hadn't had a thing explained about Krishna, his life, or what the fuck it was all about. Maybe our guide thought we'd get it from the It's A Small World display. I didn't.
We also stopped by the Shrima Bhagvad Gita Mandir, which was a pretty temple. Inside it pictures weren't permitted, which is unfortunate, as there was a very nice prayer inscribed on the stone inside, which I don't remember.
After that we piled back in the car, and our guide said he understood, as the sun can "be very hard." And that he's used to it, as he walks all day every day. We needed to swing by an ATM before heading back, and we managed to find one in the heart of the market section, right at rush hour, which made for some exciting wall to wall traffic as far as the eye could see. Eventually guys with AKs showed up to clear the traffic, and we got back to the hotel, where I spent most of the rest of the time crashed.
It was a sadly uninformative day.
Once again I had both my bread and Emily's, along with the same odd jam.
We headed out and on the road, and spent the next three hours or so traveling to Mathura, the birthplace of Krishna.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathura
I'm going to pause here and state that I know fuck and all about Krishna, about the only things touching on it that I'd experienced were Airplane!, and the chorus from My Sweet Lord. Needless to say, I was looking forward to a lesson as to what he was all about.
Mr. Singh stopped along the way, so that we could dash across traffic to get a picture of a giant statue of Durga and Hanuman that towers over an ashram. No clue what that was about, but it was impressive.
We also got lost along the way, and Mr. Singh asked us for the information on the hotel we were going to, and called them. Then we met up with a dude on a dirtbike, and followed him for a bit through dirt roads to our hotel. Mathura had an odd feeling of emptiness compared to the rest of the cities in India I'd seen.
There we found a large hotel complex, gated, manicured lawns, and still under construction. We walked into the reception, and while checking in were informed that we were the first guests of the new hotel. Felt all kinds of special, though through the rest of our stay there were the periodic brown-outs that I'm guessing were due to the complex still being under construction.
Mr. Singh indicated that we should rest for a while before heading out again, as the temples weren't opening until later, so Emily and I got settled in a nice hotel room and enjoyed the air conditioning. After which we went downstairs, met up with Mr. Singh, and asked if we could stop somewhere for lunch.
Ended up at another hotel with a gate and fence, though lower than ours, and topped with shards of broken glass. Tried not to stare at that too much, and instead enjoyed my first ever southern Indian style cuisine. Best meal I'd had there. Imagine, if you will, Ethiopian food, except good. While eating it we enjoyed watching the two waiters have a battle of channel changers, but mostly what stayed on the TV was some fantastic looking piece of Bollywood about a fistfight with a bald dude in a post-apocalyptic exploding oil field.
After that we drove a short distance, parked by a bunch of cows, and waited for a moment while a dude that looked like living beef jerky came up and said that he'd be our guide. His English wasn't so hot, but he gestured at Emily's purse, camera strap, glasses, and my glasses, and said something that I was sure I misheard. See, my brain sometimes tries to put things together in ways that I'll find more interesting to hear, so what I got was "Monkeys are dangerous." Turns out this wasn't one of the times my brain was lying to me.
We then proceeded on a foot tour through Mathura. On the way our guide would inform us that Mathura had a ton of temples (something to the effect of: if one were to visit a temple a day, you wouldn't be done after three months), and would occasionally try to teach us phrases in Hindi. For about ten minutes I knew how to say 'narrow road.' Why he felt the need to share this information, I have no idea.
About a block away from the car was the Govind Dev temple, which was breathtaking, and covered in monkeys. We walked inside, after checking our shoes with a dude at the door, and approached a sort of recessed altar area. I was waiting some sort of explanation as to what was going on with this temple, it's history, what we were seeing, but none of that really got touched on. Or if it was, I missed it. I asked about the defaced wall carvings, as I assumed that it was another case of a Hindu/Muslim conflict and was informed that it was done by "a very dirty man." After that we walked outside, around the periphery of the temple, and through back alleys towards the next temple: the house that Krishna was born in.
It's a surprisingly small complex covered in tiles, and our guide took the time to point out the names of all sorts of different countries on them, from which visitors came. Then our guide pointed us to a basin, and said that we needed to wash our hands before coming in. After running water over my hands, I looked for something to dry them with, and seeing no towels, spotted a nearby tree. I figured that rather than have the water drip on the ground, I'd give it to the plant. So I flicked my hands vigorously towards it, until I noticed our guide and the priests around us giving me the hairy eye. Then our guide explained that the tree was supposed to have been around since Krishna's time. Yup, that's me, making friends everywhere.
We started in to the building, finding a room where women with no families spent all day chanting, in exchange for being fed and clothed. Guess it beats the hell our of being beggars. Eventually we found ourselves in the main chamber where it was explained how we should approach the altar, and the priest attending it. We did so, in the deferential matter intended, and found ourselves getting a sales pitch.
Y'see, in every town I'd been in, we'd been handed over to merchants to be sold things. Rugs on three occasions, cloth on two, marble working once, a jewelers, and a leather worker's. Here, in the last city I was visiting, I was about done with salesmen, and figured I was safe in a place whose most famous thing appeared to be temples and Hare Krishnas.
So, the priest explained to us that there were various payment plans, one of which would get our name chanted by the ladies as part of their daily prayers, one which would get our name on a plaque, another which would get prayers said for us and our families, but we could give any amount we felt comfortable with, and that'd be cool.
I reached into my wallet, puled out all the cash I had, handed it over, and sat back. The priest looked at me said "Four dollars?" in an unbelieving tone. Priests: regardless of religion, country, color, or creed, they really don't change much.
I was pretty much done with him at that point. There was more talk. They gave us rock candy, had us hold some flowers up to a statue, chant something in Hindi, and then we were on our way.
We then walked a few block to another temple. Now that we were wearing flowers, the people of Mathura would say 'Hare Krishna' when we went past. We stopped outside the complex, where it was explained that in the pool below us, a crocodile and an elephant had once fought, and the elephant had won. I waited for the reason for the fight, a moral, how it changed someone's outlook causing society to start a particular practice, but apparently the elephant winning was the end of the story.
The rest of the day is somewhat of a blur. Mostly because I started having an unfortunate biological reaction to something. Emily pointed out that, on the plus side, I could now always win a round of Never Have I Ever.
We managed to visit two more temples before I had to throw in the towel.
The first was the Pagel Baba Temple, which has an amazingly odd thing: a series of animatronic displays in a man made tunnel under the temple. They tell the story of the life of Krishna. Speaking of the life of Krishna, we still hadn't had a thing explained about Krishna, his life, or what the fuck it was all about. Maybe our guide thought we'd get it from the It's A Small World display. I didn't.
We also stopped by the Shrima Bhagvad Gita Mandir, which was a pretty temple. Inside it pictures weren't permitted, which is unfortunate, as there was a very nice prayer inscribed on the stone inside, which I don't remember.
After that we piled back in the car, and our guide said he understood, as the sun can "be very hard." And that he's used to it, as he walks all day every day. We needed to swing by an ATM before heading back, and we managed to find one in the heart of the market section, right at rush hour, which made for some exciting wall to wall traffic as far as the eye could see. Eventually guys with AKs showed up to clear the traffic, and we got back to the hotel, where I spent most of the rest of the time crashed.
It was a sadly uninformative day.