Day tripping

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Okay moving along from the empirical metaphysical --

The last day at the camp was a day long outing to a bunch of temple type places in the area. The temples themselves were mostly unremarkable. However I managed to break somebody's camera (!) during the trip which certainly warrants a mention. What happened was, at the first temple of the day, my mom asked me to take a photograph of her with the swamiji. I did as instructed, and another lady saw this and realized that it was a nice idea and asked me to take one of her too. She handed me her camera and what with having my own in my hands already and what with being somewhat clumsy, I dropped both cameras. My trusty Nikon Coolpix came through okay, but hers' (a snazzy but presumably delicate Sony if I remember) conked out. The telescopic zoom got visibly askew and wouldn't retract back. The lady got understandably very upset but cooled down after a while. I spent the next couple of hours mortified and the rest of the trip feeling obligated to her and trying to get photos of her. (I am now tasked with printing and sending these photos to her back in Vizag).

I was describing this to my wife last night who (predictably) started berating my klutziness when I shut her up with -- "Look, I am the guy who broke my nephew's arm with my clumsiness. So this doesn't even count." The same goes to the rest of you out there !

Himachal is beautiful although I am unable to work up the energy to go into paens. I will try to include some of the photos I took. And Himachali women are definitely very cute. I didn't take any photos though, for fear of being slapped.


Typical Himachali temple.




They do this at several temples, visitors string up this kind of colorful cloth on a tree. I didn't enquire into the meaning behind the ritual.

Brief note: there was actually one noteworthy temple that we visited. Here there were atleast three places inside the temple complex were there were fires that supposedly kept burning by themselves without any outside fuel. It was kinda vague and hurried so I didn't get a good sense of what it was about, but I think the basic premise was correct and the cause was natural. There was one place for example where there was a small pool of water and a priest would give a spiel for a couple of minutes, and then with a flourish bring a burning stuck over the water and there would be a flareup for moment. It looked very much like what you might expect if there was a small accumulation of inflammable gas that then caught fire.


Related post here. Next post: McLeod Gunj


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Link of the day -- of interest to the academia and wannabeacademia types:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php