I'm the drummer...honest!!

Yesterday, after my thwarted attempt to make it up to Kasar Devi temple, I decided to explore the bazaar in a bit more depth, as I'd only had a quick look when I'd arrived.

The bazaar in Almora is lovely; it's a very, very long, narrow, traffic free street made up of old, carved wooden shopfronts, all painted in different colours. They're all in various stages of decay- some are almost tumbledown, whilst others appear to have been kept up really nicely- although I've never been to the Meditteranean (not sure I spelled that right), some of them had that rustic-y, Meditterannean feel about them, painted white, with the sills and door frames picked out in colour, and flower pots adorning every available ledge. Sadly, a lot of the stuff on sale was plastic tat- if I'd wanted a washing up bowl or neon pink string bracelet, I'd have been in heaven.

I walked right to the end of the bazaar, which took me quite a way from the centre of town and my hotel, and was thinking about turning back when I reached an open door set into a wall. The door led into a courtyard, where there were several very brightly coloured temples- one large on in the centre, and two or three smaller ones around the edge. There was what I took to be a random bunch of little old women, sat on the carpeted floor of the larger temple- they were all just sat around gossiping, and when they saw me, they beckoned me over into the temple, where I noticed there was a priest sat on a little throne in front of them. Every so often, another woman would enter the temple, and go and put what looked like flower petals on his bald head. The other thing I noticed was that several of teh womoen were holding instruments- one had a big drum, another had cymbals, and the sole two men, at the edge of the gathering, were each clutching portable keyboards.

Almost as soon as I'd sat down, the music and singing started, and someone shoved a pair of these little cymbals into my hands. One of the women next to me was playing a similar instrument, and showed me how to get the beat going- at the end, they all smiled at me and said "very good, very good". A future career as a percussionist beckons, and can only be a matter of time before I'm backing Aled Jones on Songs of Praise. Maybe.

I stayed for a couple of tunes, but then, not being of a particular religious/ spiritual bent, decided to leg it back to the hotel once the priest started on prayers or liturgy or whatever. None of the women seemed to be paying a great deal of attention to him, and sat gossipping between themselves. He didn't seem to mind- just carried on intoning or pronouncing or whatever it is priests do. I got the impression it was very much a local, neighbourhood temple, and everyone was very friendly and welcoming, despite the language barrier, and that the priest had perhaps long ago given up trying to impose some sort of order on his rabble.

This morning, got a cab to Kausani, where I'll probably stay for another couple of days.

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