Sunday 11 February: visiting the temples

At Sunday we woke up early because we wanted to visit some temples. Our taxi driver told us that they were closed at 12:30 P.M. so we went before lunch.

First we visited the bull temple and a temple next to it. At the temples we needed to take our shoes off. We went inside to see the bull and to honor him. From the priest who was inside I got a bindi. This is a dot worn on the forehead. So know I was part of the people there. We walked around in the temple and checked for some souvenirs. I bought a small drum, because I play drums myself.

When we’d seen everything we drove towards the Iscon temple. It’s only a few kilometers but before reaching there 35 minutes had past. The traffic in Bangalore is very busy and there are too many cars for the roads.

So we bought a ticket for the temple, but you weren’t allowed to were shorts. I wore shorts myself, so I got a kind of dress to cover my legs. At first I thought this was very stupid, but when I looked around no one was wearing shorts so I just accepted it.

Because we are foreigners the ticket seller sold us a special ticket. We didn’t have to wait all time before reaching the gods. But we would have also liked to just walk around between the Indians. Then you really feel what those people feel, if you look at them while honoring the God it is different as in the Netherlands.
Some people believe in God but Indians do what their God tells them. They are going to lie on the ground, because they think that they are closer to the god like this. This was very impressive to see.

When we came out of the temple we went for lunch at a very good restaurant called Toscana. We even got a free dessert because they still recognized my father from earlier visits.

So at 3 A.M. we drove back to the hotel. We were going to the swimming pool where I was watching live soccer from the Netherlands.

I really enjoyed this day and it also surprised me a lot. Especially the believe of those people in their God, that is very special to see.