Day 1.
Bounty.
Today is Shankranti, the harvest festival. A day to be thankful for the fruits of the labors of the cow. Kumar said, “We are worshipping the cow like our mother, because the cow gives us milk.”
It is day 1 of the 2012 S. India tour. We’ve had an adventure to say the least.
The ladies arrived from Bangalore around 11 this morning. They settled in and we had a meeting to go over the ‘details’ of this journey. We had a fabulous lunch with many Indian delicacies.. mmmmmm…..
Kumar picked us up at 3:30 for the beginning of what was to be a grand adventure. First stop; Chamundi Hill. The Goddess Chamundeswari protects all. We explored the top of the hill and entered the sacred temple hoping to receive her blessing for a safe journey. In my mind an auspicious way to start.
Kumar suggested we walk part of the way down to the big Nandi Bull and he would pick us up. We agreed it was a fabulous idea. There are over 1000 steps to get up to the top of Chamundi Hill. We did not climb them today, but it was fun to walk part of that path down to the sacred Nandi Bull (Shiva’s vehicle). Kumar was waiting there for us.
On we went to a spectacular event. The running of the ‘bulls’ of sorts.. During Shankranti, people decorate their cows in honor of the festival and bring them to an event where the cows jump over the fire. We drove down from Chamundi to an open field and Kumar said, ‘Here we will see the cows jump over the fire’. So we parked and thought maybe we should leave and come back, but suddenly, we heard drums and 20-30 decorated cows proceeded around a corner running toward us.. We all kind of hid behind the car and the cows ran past us. It was totally amazing. We followed them into the field and took photos. They stood throughout the field in their colorful array of decoration. Kumar said to me, “Samia, shall we go to the rooftop?” The owner of the building across the street invited us up to the best view in the house. It was quite amazing! We were so lucky and everyone was excited. After they lit the fire and the cows ran through, it was said and done in 1 minute and 45seconds. We all felt like we had to come down after that high.. Emily said, ‘Ok, now that I saw that, I can go back to NY.”
But, we had more plans for the evening. Kumar took us to the temple near his home and we had coffee with his family and then on to the palace. In Mysore the palace only lights up on Sunday nights. We drove there and as we were driving the lights disappeared ☹, we approached the palace and everyone was coming out. Kumar, convinced the guards to let us in. So, we swam upstream and saw the majestic palace, in the company of each other. Then, the police came and told us to leave.. We snuck in a few more shots and Kumar took us back to our hotel..
Phew.. that’s a lot for 4 hours.. Today we are off on another adventure..
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