Advertisement
Published: March 14th 2012
Mahishasura
That's me in front. Demons are silly, not dangerous.Mysore is a beautiful clean city—lots of gardens. It is the home of sandalwood perfume. Enjoy the pictures!
We learned a little about Hinduism. Three levels: Gods—but there are many and you get to choose the one you like, example, God of trees or rain, or whatever. Second come humans who can choose to be good or bad—issue of karma comes into this. Third group are demons. Demons aren’t bad—they are just silly. More powerful than humans because they can change their shape and appearance.
A little more on cows. Cows are sacred in their importance. In the old days, when a dispute was settled, a cow was offered as a gift. Cows provide milk, value as a farm animal, their dung is insulation, their urine is a cleaning agent. As well, their urine is still valued in making medicines—as it has been for 3-4,000 years. A cow is not eaten—it must be cremated. It is bad luck to have a cow die on you (plus you have to pay for the cremation), so many people turn them loose. That is why there are street cows everywhere—even walking down the middle of busy highways.
By the
Nandi
Cows are associated with Hinduism. This one is third biggest in India. way, the language spoken in this region is Kannada—pronounced just the way you would think.
A note about security around here. We go through scanners everywhere—monuments, public buildings and even our hotels. Often, we go through a scanner, our bags so through a scanner and then we get “wanded” and/or patted down. Women go through a separate scanner and female attendants frisk us behind a closed curtain. Takes a long time.
The British gave India a postal system and an educational system, but they also left them with a crazy bureaucracy. I learned that when I got my Indian visa in Ottawa—that was just frustrating! One incident here was at a high end hotel in Jaipur. This was the day I got up at 3:15 am to catch a 6 am flight to southern India. I handed in my room key and was handed a customer service questionnaire. It was a full page of fine print that appeared to cover every detail of the last few days. I wasn’t in the best mood, and really wanted a coffee. I pushed it back and said, “no, everything was just fine.” They asked me to just put my name and
Street Cows
But then there are street cows like this one. They are everywhere, cars just swerve around them. room number. I scribbled that and handed it back. They said that I had to fill it out. I said that I didn’t have my reading glasses—I really wanted that cup of coffee and remember, it is four o’clock in the morning. They suggested that I just check off everything in the “excellent” column. I took the form and when they weren’t looking, I hid it under a plant. Even the street cows don’t have this hassle.
Namaste!
Donna
Advertisement
Tot: 0.295s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 60; dbt: 0.0607s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Gudrun klingelstein
non-member comment
Mysore
Is this site, really a site for sore eyes?