1.26.2006
Day 4 - Out and About!
So this is the ENORMOUS Hare Krishna temple we visited this morning. We had to take our shoes off and walk barefoot through the whole thing - through long breezeways, up many many stairs covered with jute rugs, and into little rooms where monks were praying, and then into a huge hall with amazing gold work on the walls and huge paintings of krishna on the ceilings.
A small, bearded man with a big smile noticed me in front of one of the "spectacles" where the monks were chanting in front of three separate altars with bejeweled statues of Krishna, Krishna and his mother, and another Krishna, and they laid coconuts and flowers in front of them...anyhoo, so this little smiling man looked me in the eye and started chanting Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna...the whole bit...and then he walked off. I saw him later as we were leaving and he asked where I was from, and he said there's some Hare Krishna shrine I have to visit...it was surreal.
We were blessed by monks and stood with many hundreds of Indians as they said prayers and swung incense and doused us all with rosewater…then the three of us were shuttled off down a separate hallway where awaiting monks hit us up for money to feed children. Apparently they feed 300,000 children here every day b/c the government doesn’t, so we ponied up $10 each to sponsor one child…then they shuttled everyone through the gift shop! For 100 rupees (like 2 bucks) I got a clock with baby Krishna on it.
We dropped by the hotel again - to wash our feet and give our driver a chance to have lunch - and then we went to TGI Fridays!!!! I don't even go in the States, so this was a trip.
fyi: Indian ketchup, though Heinz, is completely gross. It's sugar-sweet. And it was so fuckin awesome to be served by an Indian man, with an Indian accent, wearing FLAIR. I so wanted to get a video of him saying "I'm not comfortable talking about my flair," but I didn't have the heart to ask...
