**I forgot a story in my “Tip of
India” trip!**
(Saturday) Before we headed to the
beach for the sunset, we traveled to a temple that our professor was very
excited to visit and pray in. We sat in
the car and waited for our professor because he wouldn’t be long. We had a beggar with a missing leg knocking
on the window of our car who was super scary looking and kept staring at Julia,
trying to get her attention. It was
awkward and uncomfortable, so our driver yelled at him to go away. He stayed near, and it made for an
interesting wait. Also, while we were
waiting we saw a boy keep kicking around a stray puppy which made us super
sad! We wanted to jump out and take the
puppy from him, but realized it wasn’t exactly our place. We figured he was just causing some mischief,
but then he would pick up the puppy and try to beg with it. When that failed, he went back to kicking it
around. We later found out that his
mother was standing nearby, doing absolutely nothing. Nobody else stepped in to do anything,
either. Clearly, the stray dogs in India
are not treated like we treat our dogs here in America.
Now...to the real topic of this blog...
Tuesday 7/10/12
Monday night, we were basically
finished with our research projects and we were able to leave for a fun-filled
week of tourism. We spent some time with
our friends from the kitchen while packing for the week. When we left for the bus, we were surprised
to find that the bus stop was basically the side of the road lined with shops –
much different than the bus station we were expecting. We were initially on one bus with lounging
chairs and then about 2 hours in were able to switch to our sleeper bus. It was great to lay down, and we got all
settled in to our “bunks.” In keeping
with the theme of bathroom issues on the bus trips, this trip was no
exception. The bus made a few
side-of-the-road stops, but none for women.
Our professor was up this trip and knew that 4 of us girls had to use
the bathroom. He talked to the bus
driver and they figured out a stop where we could get off. We were sent off of the bus, but there was no
bathroom there. It was the middle of the
night, so many of the shop fronts were closed.
There were men outside the bus who were directing us down a dark, gated
closed alley. At least that’s what we
thought they were saying. I’m pretty
sure that they were trying to tell us just to squat in the darkness of the
alley, which we were NOT going to do when they were all outside of the bus
watching us!! After 3 or 4 minutes of
being completely confused, our professor came outside. “What is the problem?” Us: “There is no bathroom!” He spoke with the driver again, and they
decided the bus needed to go further down the road and let us out there. Again, we were sent off of the bus, alone,
wandering around looking for a bathroom.
We still could not find a bathroom and there were men by the bus again
trying to tell us where to go. After a
few minutes, our professor came out with the bus driver and said we had to go
down the street. We followed the man to
the bus company’s business store front which was on the second floor of a
building. We had to WAKE UP employees
that were sleeping on the counters of the business (it was strange and
uncomfortable to intrude), but we were finally able to use a (Indian) toilet. After all of that excitement, we woke up
around 10:00am to find we were stopped at a truck stop-like area to let the
driver get something to eat. We finally
arrived at our first location, Mysore, a whole 12 hours after we left
Chennai! It was a long trip, that’s for
sure!
We were picked up by a driver, but
the car we had was not very big, especially for all of our luggage PLUS
us! Some of the items needed to go up on
top of the car on the luggage rack, but they weren’t strapped down because we “weren’t
going very far.” We were wary of this,
but decided to put some things up there.
Of course, MY backpack is the only thing that fell off of the roof into
a busy intersection!! We stopped and our professor jumped out to get my
backpack. I don’t think anything broke,
but it was frustrating to have it fall when we were assured that it would
not. We checked into a hotel that was
very nice – quite possibly one of the nicest we had been to. This hotel even had a glass door to separate
the toilet from the shower!!! We found that to be very exciting! We headed downstairs for a breakfast buffet
and then headed out touring. First, we
went to the fancy Mysore Palace that was much more modern than the wooden
palace we toured at the tip of India. We
hired a tour guide to show us all of the fancy places and secrets of the palace. It was beautiful and interesting to learn
about the history of the palace. We were
not allowed to take pictures inside of the palace, but we bought a DVD tour to
bring back to the US. 
After the palace, we traveled up a
hill to a temple where our professor went to pray, but we just stayed outside
to look out at the mountain scenery.
Next, we visited the site of another Shiva bull – the second we visited
of 5 total in India. Here, we stopped at
a vendor on the side of the road who was making small statues out of
stone. It was super interesting to watch
him carve the details right in front of our eyes! We all got a small statue which we then got
personalized. The craftsmanship was
amazing. This boy who was most likely
about our age spoke wonderful English, and he said he learned the language not
through school or to go the US or England, but just to be able to do better in
his “business” to communicate better with the tourists. The last place we visited Tuesday was another
palace that had been turned into a hotel.
This hotel was SUPER high class, so we just stopped in for a King Fisher
(our second beer in India) and to admire the extent of wealth and beauty. When we left the palace, there was a man who
did a short magic show in the parking lot for us. He was MUCH better than expected, and was
thoroughly entertaining! He even
involved his audience, causing Daryl to “pee” into a bottle (some kind of magic…). After this, went back to the hotel for the
night.
Wednesday 7/11/12
Wednesday we woke up early in
order to visit everything planned before it got too hot. The first trip of the day was to venture up a
mountain to the world’s largest monolithic statue, Gomateshwara. This statue is a place of worship for people
of the Jainism religion and is an important place to visit for them. We counted the steps going up the side of the
mountain, and it was something over 600!
It was a hike, and I was struggling being afraid of heights, but I made
it up there! It was cool to see, but
different than I expected. I really
enjoyed being able to experience something so important to another religion so
different than my own. Going back down
the mountain was worse (scary-ness wise), and I actually think I somehow pulled
some sort of muscle in my calf, because it hurt for days after! 
Next, we visited the two “soap”
temples – temples near Mysore that are made out of soap stone. The first stone temple had 2 more of the
Shiva bulls (now 4 out of 5 in India – pretty impressive for a 6 week
trip!) These temples had amazing detail
because of the texture of the stone – soap stone is much softer, so more minute
details are possible. It was fun to look
at all the different scenes carved in the temples – many of which dealt with
stories from the Hindu religion. At one
of the temples, I got caught up by some boys who wanted to take a picture with
me (nothing new…we had been getting this all trip long). Our professor finally chimed in and said, “ok,
only one more picture, and then I’ll have to charge.” As we walked away, he said he thinks that
they only wanted a picture with me because I was the whitest of the group. Thanks…
In between the two temples, we
stopped for lunch at a fancy restaurant which looked somewhat Japanese, but had
an Indian twist to it. The ride back to
our hotel at the end of the day was extremely long, so we were tired and ready
for bed by the time we got back!