Woke up too bright and too early this morning to embark on a pretty ridiculous tour of happening places in Bangalore. Our first stop was Bull Temple, where we observed worshippers throwing water, milk, and curd in order to cleanse and appease Lord Ganesha:
Above, center: I tried to take a picture of a man prostrating himself, but I felt weird documenting something that was obviously so spiritual and personal, so I half-heartedly and quickly snapped this photograph... and then lol'ed a bit in the shrine :(
Next was the main temple, which was constructed in the 1500's to honor Nandi.
He was huuuuge! And his temple, very solemn.
After bull temple, we bus'ed over to Cubbon Park, one of India's many public parks. Lunch there was a boxed and somewhat messy affair. We then played a series of team-bonding games, which were designed to be slightly embarrassing (the first game was a relay involving tucking a potato between your legs, walking about 30 feet, and then dropping it into a bucket without any help from hands...) and were supposed to encourage us to ask silly or seemingly stupid questions during training because we'd never be able to out-dumb ourselves verbally than we already had through the games.
We spent the mid-afternoon playing a kind of scavenger hunt/Amazing Race-esque game where we were set off into two of the busier areas in Bangalore, Commercial Street and MG Street, and asked to solve a bunch of riddles/clues, find the locations, and pick up the next clue. My team managed to fail pretty miserably, partly because one of the managers at Amoeba (a hip sports bar) had no idea about giving us envelopes even though we were positive we'd found the right place, and partly because I had to stop so many times to pee (it was hot! I had a lot of water!)
The race was exhausting, especially in the heat, so we cooled off with a ridiculous meal at...MKR? MGR? I don't remember too well. Basically, we all sat down at our tables and servers just came by and heaped various food on our places. It was ridiculous - every minute or so another barefoot guy with a pot would just show up and place a dollop of this or a spoonful of that onto my plate. The food was delicious overall, but some of the "dishes", if you can call them as such, were so ridiculously spicy that my lips started to go numb :( I was stuffed by the end but my plate was still pretty much 80 or 90% full, much to my chagrin.
We got back to the Diamond District at around 4, and I was so exhausted that I just fell asleep on my bed without remembering to turn on my mosquito light-thing on again, so I am the proud new owner of four more bites, all of them in semi-awkward places, huzzah!
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ReplyDeleteWhat you ate is called Thali, and for me I found that being able to tell the servers not to dump more food on my plate was an acquired skill that I never quite got the hang of... I always ended with too much food on my plate while everyone else always cleaned theirs
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