Temples, palaces and reprimands

You could easily spend all your time in India visiting temples and palaces - there are plenty to choose from.  When we were planning our trip, my niece asked me how many we wanted to see, and I opted for one or two of each.  So in Bangalore we visited Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace and the Big Bull Temple, and on our Mysore trip we visited Mysore Palace and SomanathapuraTemple.

The day we visited the Big Bull Temple and Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace was notable because it was the first day we went out without S - our niece and guide on this tour - and we got told off three times! The first time was in the Bull Temple itself, where we got told off for taking photos.  I was confused by this, as the place was full of Indian visitors taking pictures on their i-phones, but it may have been something to do with it being seen as disrespectful to take a picture of the image of the god.

Next to the Bull Temple is a park which is well-known for its fruit bats, who roost there during the day and can be seen flying out over the city in search of fruit in the evening, and returning early in the morning.  We were keen to see the roosting bats, but couldn't get into the park from the entrance next to the temple as it was locked.  We walked down the path beside the park and found another entrance.  But as we went in, a man came running down from a building nearby, shouting to us and doing an excellent example of the disapproving Indian head wobble.  Clearly there was a reason why we weren't supposed to be there, so we apologised - thinking perhaps it was some private part of the gardens attached to the temple - and this was accepted with a more conciliatory head wobble.  Eventually we found another gate with a notice, and discovered the park was shut until the evening.

Later on that day we visited Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace, and received our third telling off - this time totally unjustified.

As is quite often the case, there were different entrance fees for Indian and foreign visitors listed at the entrance, and the sign also indicated a fee of 25 rupees for using a video camera.  When we paid our entrance J asked for a video ticket as well, and was told this was included in the foreigners' ticket price.  But as she approached the palace, video camera in hand, another guard challenged her and asked to see her video ticket.  After some debate we sent him to check with the man on the gate, who confirmed that we didn't have to pay more.  This resulted in a VERY sulky face from him!

I liked this palace very much - it was small, and cool, and had a very beautiful garden.

Mysore palace, in contrast, is the biggest palace in India, and is very grand, rich and ornate.

You're not allowed to take photos inside (with or without a ticket).  It was amazing - paintings, gold, glass, solid silver doors... oddly much of it made in the UK!  It was a real spectacle, and well worth a visit.

The other temple we visited was also amazing.  Somanathapura temple is built from soapstone.  The whole of it is covered in tiny and intricate carvings of people, gods and animals.

Ganesh Chaturthi

A blog about India would hardly be complete without a post about gods and festivals.  Religion is never far away - practically every car we travelled in had a god on the dashboard - usually Ganesha the elephant god, the remover of obstacles - highly appropriate in Indian traffic! ( In Christian Kerala this was often replaced by a rosary hanging from the rear-view mirror - the driver who took us from Kochi to Periyar clutched his from time to time in a way I did not find very reassuring!).

We were visiting in the time leading up to and during the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi.  This culminates in people parading images of Ganesha through the street and then immersing them in the nearest lake.  It used to be that the images were made of local clay (some still are clay) and so were effectively being returned to the earth from which they had been formed.  But these days many are made of Plaster of Paris, which has quite a serious environmental impact.  Bangalore has dealt with this by setting up a separate tank next to the lake and encouraging people to immerse their Ganesha images there instead.

When we were driving around in the first week of our visit we saw quite a few of the commercially produced Ganesha images, wrapped in plastic and waiting to be sold by the side of the road.

And on the last day of our visit, we saw them in action.  Earlier in the day my sister and I had seen a lorry with a group of young boys in the back, playing drums.  When my niece took us out to visit the site of the Ganesha immersions we encountered several similar lorries on the way, each bearing a Ganesha surrounded by boys and men, drumming, dancing and shouting.  Many of the temples along the way were lit up with fairy lights, and as we came to the lake there were enormous flashing images of Ganesha and other gods.

At the entrance to the lake area people stopped and unloaded their Ganeshas.  There were families and groups of co-workers decorating the images with garlands and lighting candles.

When they had finished their puja they carried the images ceremoniously into the lake area and handed them over the fence to the volunteers waiting to do the immersions.  As the Ganeshas were immersed three times and then launched into the water a shout would go up, and the volunteer would  bring back water to splash on the waiting devotees.

Around the edge of the area were the remains of last night's immersed Ganeshas, which had been trawled out of the lake again, and left to await disposal.  They were eerily grotesque, and added to the scene of devastation - the pool itself was filled with debris.  It was a strange contrast with the devotional nature of what was going on.

"One photo please"

I didn't expect that we would be such a novelty - Bangalore is a big city, and even when we travelled around, we didn't go anywhere remote or off the the tourist track. But several times people came up to us and asked to have a photo taken with us.   I don't know if it was just being white, or being a group of white women of varying ages - but it happened several times.

In the botanical gardens in Bangalore it was a couple of young female students, and later some giggling little girls; at Bheemeshwari a young couple with a baby boy; on the beach at Kochi Fort a whole family.  Perhaps the weirdest occasion for me was when we went to watch the fruit bats fly out from the park by the Big Bull Temple in Bangalore.  There were several young men in their twenties hanging around and staring at us in a way that I initially found quite intimidating.  I assumed they were interested in my two nieces - only a few years older than them - but it turned out they were equally interested in having their pictures taken with three women in their fifties.  Bizarre!

Usually they had a phone and a friend to take the photo for them, but in one or two cases they actually just wanted us to take a photo of them with our cameras.  So in my collection of photos I have a number of images of members of my family standing next to total strangers.  I wonder if they think about it, and wonder what people back in England think about them.  I certainly wonder where those photos of me and my family are now, and how people view us - friendly strangers or foreign oddities?