udupi

udupi is a busy place. well, compared to arambol and gokarna it is. we were fully immersed in an indian city. swami didn’t recognize it from the time he had been here 16 years before; but the island around sri krishna mutt was pretty calm and peaceful, if you ignored the long queue of pilgrims and schoolchildren coiling around the temple waiting for the free prasadam (blessed temple food) meal. all the guest houses in the temple complex and around were fully booked as it was the time of a festival. so we had to walk a bit away from the centre to find cheap rooms for 400 rupees a room.

in the evening, we waited for the procession to start. it began with the holy statues of the deities being brought out of the temple and placed in the two chariots. the smaller of the two chariots was pulled along by the people, whilst the bigger one was pulled by an elephant. lots of drummers around providing the musical accompaniment as we made our way to make a kora (one complete round) of the square. and then, as we watched the deities being unloaded from the processional chariots and placed in the ‘carriage’ held aloft on shoulders and swiftly taken back into the temple, we were invited by one of the brahmins to enter inside the temple. swami and i quickly removed our sandals and followed the group inside.

it was an amazing spectacle. amidst the din of the drumming, the deities were placed back on their shrines in the centre of the mutt. this was made of stone, and the mutt itself was made of a dark wood, or wood made black from the smoke of the oil lamps and candles used to light up that place over the thousands of years! it was dark and stuffy as people crowded around the shrine where the head priest and bramacharya was blessing the lucky pilgrims gathered nearest the shrine. we watched for a time and then made a couple of koras around the shrine and left. on our way out, we were invited by another brahmin to take prasadam, but looking at the queue, we declined. instead, we walked around the outer temple complex, and found a puppet-theatre. we didn’t understand a word, but the action spoke for itself. truly amazing puppet fire-show.

we realised that gregory and blondin must have gone back to the hotel and walked back there too through the empty streets. “this evening we saw the real india”, swami said. i totally agreed. next morning, we ate breakfast together at the restaurant next door before saying our goodbyes to gregory and blondin, who were leaving for mangalore and beyond. and after internet/money exchange/shopping at first indian supermarket, we made it to the bus station and took a very modern, clean, and relatively expensive local bus to mulki.