GREETINGS FROM TIRUPATI
Hello everyone,
I am in the city of Tirupati,in the state of Andra Prakesh, in the sovereign Repulic of India. Eeee!!gads!! it is hot here!! 35 in the day and 27 at night (that would be about 95 and 81degrees American). I got here yesterday still travelling with Avidan, a cribbage playing Israeli physical therapist who is trying to make sense of his life and has quit his job as a bartender in Haifa and took a one way flight to India. Good Guy. We have been road dogs for about 2 weeks now but this is about to come to an end as he is going to head north and I will go west back to Chennai (Madras) and from there I will fly to Malaysia in 12 days.
So I have been in Tamil Nadu for the last couple of weeks just hanging around and going to a lot of temples. They are beautiful and interesting but a littel bit of "oh well its another temle" feeling starts to set in after a while. The best one I have seen in thewse last 4 months in India was in Chedinpuram. The art work in this temple far outshines all the others. it is one of the only temples in India that is not controlled by the goverment but by the Brahmin priests themselves and there fore they take better care of it. All the idols are freshly painted and it is clean and beautiful.
I have been eating a lot of the great South India cuisine. Pongal is a favorite. It is a fermented Rice dish that is scooped up with like an ice cream
scooper. It has whole b lack pepppercorns and bits of onion and carrot in it and It is served hot (or at least its supposed to be hot sometimes only warm!)I am not sure how it is made. It is made with yeast, of course, and so it is said to be fermented but it is cooked and so the yeasts are dead and it isnt bubbly like beer but kind of the consistency of porridge (oatmeal) after it has sat cooling for 15 minutes. It is served with the samba sauce (red lentils tomatoes not too thick not too thin lots of ginger and chili) and coconut chutney. It comes on a banana leaf and you pour the sauces over it and mush it up with your fingers and eat it with your fingers. Here in South India only foreigner restaruants use silverware. All the locals eat everything with their fingers.
Eating rice dishes with spicy curries over them with your fingers is pretty weird until you get used to it. I have gotten used to a lot of weird things these last four months. I havent wiped my arse with paper in an awful long time!!! Just in case any of you were wondering heeeheeheee!!!
Even after this length of time, there are a lot of things here that still amaze and confuse me. The level of Filth is still just incomprehensible. Somtimes when you approach a river you can smell it from 100 meters away. Like an open sewer. It seems the more sacred a river or lake the more the indians shit and piss in it and throw rubbish in it. Incredibly deformed, mutilated, diseased beggars swarm you when you exit the bus or train station. They head right past all the Indians and go right for the white people. People that are so messed up that I would have had nightmares about them when I was a little kid. It is so annoying. They follow you and look all lpitiful. They ask for food money. If you give them food, they get mad and want money. I try not to give them because ti just sends the absolute wrong message. You ;cant tell them to expect white people to give them something for nothing. Still sometimes I buy ice cream cones for the little kids because they are just littel kids and it is so hot and a little kid should have an icecream when it is 95 degrees(34) and I know i shouldnt but...They're just kids...and its soo sad...
Stayed in Mamalapuram for a week and went swimming in the Bay of Bengal. Good town. A tourist town but a good one. Big temples there and lots of little hotels and cheap ganja...The hotel boys are trying to sell you ganja before you even can get signed into the register...
While passing through Chennai on my way here to Tirupadi, i went and visited the Krishnamurti foundation there. Thy have a couple or 6 acres of beautiful gardens and a few guesthouses and a big old colonial housse with meeting spaces and a big video collection and lots of books on the talks given by Juddi Krishnamurti. This guy was an extraordinary philosopher who talks about self-observation as the way to freedom from Machine existence.
"The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed"- J.Krishnamurti
"Anyone interested in more can go to
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/
I arranged to spend my last week in India in one of the guest rooms there and will be there from May 7 till I leave on May 14. Gonna read and meditate in the gardens and watch videos of Krishnamurti and just relax andd get my head together before taking off for 4 or 6 or 8 months in South East Asia. I want to see some more of Indonesia as well as Malaysia the west of Laos (plain of Jars) and probably to Viet nam and definately to Singapore and then gonna meet up with "the old cowboy" and maybe(hopefully)Arbinius Maximus; Viscount and Poobah of Paso, in Hong Kong at the end of June. Then maybe Philipines for some R&R.
Sha, I just dont KNOW!! The world is so big and wonderful I just dont know where to go next hahhh what a tough life. So here are some interesting quotes from some interesting people until I write again.
Did these guys know G W Bush???
Peace and love to all who read these words,
Robert
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Martin Luther King
"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." James Madison
I am in the city of Tirupati,in the state of Andra Prakesh, in the sovereign Repulic of India. Eeee!!gads!! it is hot here!! 35 in the day and 27 at night (that would be about 95 and 81degrees American). I got here yesterday still travelling with Avidan, a cribbage playing Israeli physical therapist who is trying to make sense of his life and has quit his job as a bartender in Haifa and took a one way flight to India. Good Guy. We have been road dogs for about 2 weeks now but this is about to come to an end as he is going to head north and I will go west back to Chennai (Madras) and from there I will fly to Malaysia in 12 days.
So I have been in Tamil Nadu for the last couple of weeks just hanging around and going to a lot of temples. They are beautiful and interesting but a littel bit of "oh well its another temle" feeling starts to set in after a while. The best one I have seen in thewse last 4 months in India was in Chedinpuram. The art work in this temple far outshines all the others. it is one of the only temples in India that is not controlled by the goverment but by the Brahmin priests themselves and there fore they take better care of it. All the idols are freshly painted and it is clean and beautiful.
I have been eating a lot of the great South India cuisine. Pongal is a favorite. It is a fermented Rice dish that is scooped up with like an ice cream
scooper. It has whole b lack pepppercorns and bits of onion and carrot in it and It is served hot (or at least its supposed to be hot sometimes only warm!)I am not sure how it is made. It is made with yeast, of course, and so it is said to be fermented but it is cooked and so the yeasts are dead and it isnt bubbly like beer but kind of the consistency of porridge (oatmeal) after it has sat cooling for 15 minutes. It is served with the samba sauce (red lentils tomatoes not too thick not too thin lots of ginger and chili) and coconut chutney. It comes on a banana leaf and you pour the sauces over it and mush it up with your fingers and eat it with your fingers. Here in South India only foreigner restaruants use silverware. All the locals eat everything with their fingers.
Eating rice dishes with spicy curries over them with your fingers is pretty weird until you get used to it. I have gotten used to a lot of weird things these last four months. I havent wiped my arse with paper in an awful long time!!! Just in case any of you were wondering heeeheeheee!!!
Even after this length of time, there are a lot of things here that still amaze and confuse me. The level of Filth is still just incomprehensible. Somtimes when you approach a river you can smell it from 100 meters away. Like an open sewer. It seems the more sacred a river or lake the more the indians shit and piss in it and throw rubbish in it. Incredibly deformed, mutilated, diseased beggars swarm you when you exit the bus or train station. They head right past all the Indians and go right for the white people. People that are so messed up that I would have had nightmares about them when I was a little kid. It is so annoying. They follow you and look all lpitiful. They ask for food money. If you give them food, they get mad and want money. I try not to give them because ti just sends the absolute wrong message. You ;cant tell them to expect white people to give them something for nothing. Still sometimes I buy ice cream cones for the little kids because they are just littel kids and it is so hot and a little kid should have an icecream when it is 95 degrees(34) and I know i shouldnt but...They're just kids...and its soo sad...
Stayed in Mamalapuram for a week and went swimming in the Bay of Bengal. Good town. A tourist town but a good one. Big temples there and lots of little hotels and cheap ganja...The hotel boys are trying to sell you ganja before you even can get signed into the register...
While passing through Chennai on my way here to Tirupadi, i went and visited the Krishnamurti foundation there. Thy have a couple or 6 acres of beautiful gardens and a few guesthouses and a big old colonial housse with meeting spaces and a big video collection and lots of books on the talks given by Juddi Krishnamurti. This guy was an extraordinary philosopher who talks about self-observation as the way to freedom from Machine existence.
"The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed"- J.Krishnamurti
"Anyone interested in more can go to
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/
I arranged to spend my last week in India in one of the guest rooms there and will be there from May 7 till I leave on May 14. Gonna read and meditate in the gardens and watch videos of Krishnamurti and just relax andd get my head together before taking off for 4 or 6 or 8 months in South East Asia. I want to see some more of Indonesia as well as Malaysia the west of Laos (plain of Jars) and probably to Viet nam and definately to Singapore and then gonna meet up with "the old cowboy" and maybe(hopefully)Arbinius Maximus; Viscount and Poobah of Paso, in Hong Kong at the end of June. Then maybe Philipines for some R&R.
Sha, I just dont KNOW!! The world is so big and wonderful I just dont know where to go next hahhh what a tough life. So here are some interesting quotes from some interesting people until I write again.
Did these guys know G W Bush???
Peace and love to all who read these words,
Robert
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Martin Luther King
"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." James Madison
posted by Rambling Robert | 1:30 AM
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