A Hindu Holy Place

Coming to Mathura was recommended to us because it was one of the most 'spiritual' cities in India. Not being Hindu, I'm sure some of its charms were lost on me but it's always good to see another side of a place anyhow.

The primary thing to see here is the temple that was built over the "birthplace" of Shri Krishna. We saw it. It took about 5 minutes. Huh. Again, perhaps not being Hindu plays a role, but I've been to other temples of which I'm not a part of the faith (Buddhist, Hindu, etc) and I can truly appreciate and enjoy them for what they are so I have to maintain that this was the least impressive of them all. Unless you're in the market for some Hindu-related souveniers, of which there as stand after stand, it left a little to be desired. Either way, we can say we saw it!

We were planning that that would be our afternoon but since that didn't happen, we were left with lots of time on our hands. We found the main street of the city and decided to just walk and check it out. The downtown streets of Mathura are exactly what both Sarah and I had imagined all of India would be like, but which we hadn't really seen since getting here. The streets are dirt, with clouds of dust ever-present, there is raw sewage flowing down the streets, flies everywhere, open markets, children begging, monkeys and oxen and donkeys running free through the streets... it was all of your worst imaginations of India rolled into one. But, despite struggling to breathe due to the heavy, dirt-packed air, (I have developed a nagging cough since being here) we walked because I think it's important to see all sides of a place.

Once again, we were a hit with the little kids of the town, waving and smiling and saying hello-o and taking pictures of them to their giggling delight, I bought a Thums Up from a genuinely kind-eyed older man (and I got to stand there with him and drink it as you can't walk off with the glass bottles, which they reuse), we saw parades of monkeys running through the town, I let a little boy use my camera to take a picture, to his utter fascination.... it was a good afternoon.

In the evening, we took a boat ride along the Yamuna River and from the boat got to watch a Hindu ceremony taking place on shore. It's a nightly ritual in this town where they pray to the god of the river and send candles and flowers floating out into the water. It all culminates in a fevered chant of the whole group surrounding one guy holding up torch. I didn't understand a lot of the significance of much of it, but it was pretty interesting to witness nonetheless.

When we got back to the room, we realized that it would be our last night sleeping in India. We were starting to congratulate ourselves on everything that we have "survived" in our various Indian hostels (things that I could detail but, really, there is just no good reason to discuss them among polite company) along the way and were talking about how nice it will be to be somewhere clean soon in Thailand. Just about that time, Sarah walked into the bathroom and saw a HUUUGE cockroach. I trapped it under a bucket and we were thinking that was our final Indian hotel experience but, at just about at that same moment, the electricity went out. Pitch, pitch darkness. All we could do was stand there in the blackness and laugh. Especially since one of the selling points of this hotel is that it has a generator for "constant power supply" (believe me, it really is a selling point here). At some point it all just becomes so awful, that all you can do is laugh. And so we did.