Sajjangad

I had another chance to travel outside of Mumbai, this time to a little hill fort in the countryside from the 1600s that has been turned into a an ashram. This is the furthest off the beaten path I've been in my life. I saw an amazingly quiet and serene monastery, nature, and some more parts of India that took my breath away.

Here I am trying to look dignified and serene just like all the Brahmins that are here and all the paintings of gods, priests, and warriors in buildings here.

It was really cool to see the monkeys up close here.

When India was ruled by a Muslim people called the Mughals, one Hindu king named Shivajee helped kick them out of Maharashtra. Sajjangad was one of his forts, and after creating an independent kingdom, he gave it to his guru to make into an ashram. Shivajee has a big presence in Mumbai too; both the airport and the central railway station are named after him, and one Maharashtriyan Nationalist political party calls itself 'Shivajee's Army'. This painting I took a picture of inside one temple.

I saw a lot of water buffalo and cows. We even had to stop on the highway due to a cow in the road!

I got yelled at for taking photos of cows and told that I was "disrupting the ghee-making proccesses". Ghee is an indian butter I eat daily in almost everything.

I got to sit in Sajjangad's library which was fun too (reading the small English section).

 I'm on a boat!

This is an area where three rivers combine, very far off the beaten path, like the rest of this trip. 

Mosque and Mandir

I got to go see more religious buildings. I've now been to five Hindu Mandirs (temples- well one of them was a Hare Krishna so I don't know if it counts as Hindu), one Christian church (the same church many times though), two Jain Mandirs, and now one Islamic mosque, in Mumbai.

This is the first time I've been to a mosque anywhere in the world. It was a fantastic visit.

These are prayer rugs laid side by side.

Women are not allowed to enter the mosque. Men can only enter with these special Islamic hats on. For people like me that don't own them, they leave plastic hats by the side of the entrance. And of course, like all religious buildings in India, you have to take your shoes off when you enter.

I do live in one of the suburbs very close to the edge of Mumbai, so although it is insanely crowded to me (or was when I first came here), it's very quiet and calm to Mumbaikars (people who live in Mumbai). This mosque was only a 40 minute bus ride away.

It felt very strange to see an Islamic neighborhood. The street signs made by the government are of course in English, Hindi, and Marathi just like everywhere else in Mumbai, but everything else was written in Arabic and Urdu. It was strange to see flying flags of the crescent and moon, and the entire place had a very strange feeling of being in a different country. Tensions between Hindus and Muslims seem very high here.

I also got to visit another Jain Mandir (Mandir is the Hindi word for temple).

Jainism is an ancient Indian religion, separate from Hinduism and Buddhism. The Jains I've met either believe in a universe that itself is god, or that all people are part of god but fail to realize that they are just single cells of a vast multicelled god. At least that's the best way I can describe it. Almost every time I ask Jains to explain their religion they end up arguing amongst themselves and accusing each other of saying incorrect things. So they should get that sorted out amongst themselves.

This temple they let us take photos in, but it felt wrong to do so. Some of the worshippers seemed to glare at our cameras, so I stopped taking photos. Because of this, I don't happen to have photos of the big gold marble statue at the center of the temple.

This reminds me- awhile ago, during Ganpathi festival I got to see 17 foot tall idol. Most people in Mumbai keep 1 foot tall ones in their homes, but they are a few super famous ones that are even as tall as 60 feet!! Here's the largest one I saw:

To Kerala and back!

I got a chance to see a South Indian wedding in a state called Kerala.

Kerala (shown in close up on the right) is the south-western coastline of India. I took this photo on the side of a government school in Guruvayoor, Kerala. The tan state in the middle of the western side of India is Maharashtra, where I live.

The language in the middle is Hindi (which I can read), and the language on the left is Malayalam (which I want to be able, but can't). Malayalam is the local language of Kerala.

This is the town of Thrissur, in Kerala.

It was amazing to get to drive past rice, banana, and coconut plantations to into the jungle! The actual jungle! Even more amazing, this house (that I got to go inside) was built in 1815!

One of my Indian friends here told me that although he's never been to the U.S., going from Mumbai to Kerala is how he imagines going from New York City to Kansas is like. There may be some truth in that. But here's definitely more trees in Kerala than Kansas.

English is found less in rural areas.

Kerala is filled with coconut, rice, and banana plantations, and some jungles.

I saw a snake here. Everywhere in India, I (and everyone else during the rainy season) wear nothing but sandals (in fact my feet haven't touched socks in almost a month) so I became scared.

We also got to go an elephant sanctuary! There were almost 70 elephants there! They were chained to rocks and trees, and there was no glass or fence between them and us.

We didn't get to see baby elephants, those are kept inside a temple.

At first I thought the elephants that they were cleaning were drugged. Nope. Just super calm and happy. The elephants that were being washed kept making funny gargling noises that sounded sort of similar to purring.

This elephant was not happy. He/She threw a log at me, and almost hit me.

South Indian art is very different from North Indian art. In fact each state is quite different. This is typical Malayalam art.

This is Krishna. These pieces of art were at a hotel (not the hotel I stayed in, but the one the wedding was held in).

The town of Guruvayoor,where the wedding was held, is a pretty strange place. Like small college towns in the U.S., Guruvayoor is entirely centered around one institution. Guruvayoor temple is one of the most famous and auspicious in all of India.

Safety standards are lower here.

In south India, food is always eaten on banana leaves. There's an herbal juice in the middle of the leaf (water is never drunk with a meal, something I had to used to), and some spices, chutneys, and coconut mixture on the part of the lead away from me. Next, someone comes around and dumps about three pounds of rice on the other side of the leaf. Mix in spices and chutneys and you're good to go! Did I mention that now I almost never use silverware? Rice is always eaten with the hand. So mix in spices and start scooping it up.

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Goodbye Kerala! It was an awesome time, and thankfully didn't rain once while we were there!