Today we were up bright and early. We said goodbye to our guest house hosts after some tea and coffee at 6 am. We met with an Indian man named Arjun, who was very knowledgeable on history and religion. We walked through the oldest area in Bengaluru City in which Arjun told us its vast story. He pointed out certain buildings that had been there for many years and what their purposes were. In particular we saw many temples, nearly every block had its own. All of them were dedicated to worshipping different deities. One common type of temple had multiple stories and was built similar to that of a pyramid. The outside of the temples had many figures which taught people the significance of the gods that were being worshipped there. All of the colors on the temples were bring and bold, the temples were well taken care of and repainted annually.
Even in one household, multiple religions could be followed by a single person For example, Arjun told us "People may have a picture of their god hanging up besides another picture of a different god, and next to that a picture of Jesus." We thought it was interesting that people had such freedom to worship any mix of religions they chose to follow.
After walking through the busy streets for a while and taking in the fast-paced urban communities, we stopped at a local restaurant for breakfast. The restaurant specialized in making dosa, a fried crepe like bread filled with spicy potato. It is eaten with your hands, but only your right hand. In old tradition, your left hand was considered dirty because you cleaned with it, while keeping your right hand pristine. This is also why you shake with your right hand and not your left. The dosa is normally a breakfast food, but we also ate it for dinner yesterday. Both dosas were good, but the local version was far better.
After our traditional breakfast, we headed out again to a flower market. Before we saw the flower market, we passed by a lot of spice shops, all containing different spices and grains. Arjun told us that the main spice used in spicy Indian cuisines was chili pepper, which was actually imported from South America. India being a spice capital of the world, this was very interesting to learn. Because Black Pepper is indigenous to India, before there was chili peppers, Indians often used Black Peppers to spice their food. We learned that the Black Pepper used to be incredibly valuable and was known as Black Gold. This was because when the Romans first discovered this pepper, they traded it for gold.
When we arrived at the flower market, we first noticed the large amount of color and business of the people. We noticed that there were different ways in which the flowers were sold, one way was that the flowers were sold in long chains inside of large baskets. These flowers were usually bought in bulk by merchants who wanted to sell them in their own shops outside of the flower market. Then we saw many singular flowers that were in the process of being sewn into chains. The third way we saw the flowers presented was in garlands. These garlands were used in weddings in which the bride and groom gave each other one during the ceremony. The selling of spices and flowers is so different from what we experience from street sellers.
After a very busy morning, our day was not over yet. We drove to the airport to fly to Kerala, another state in India. We thought it was interesting that in the security lines we were split by gender. The flight was short and smooth, only 45 minutes. We walked out of the airport into the hotter weather of nearly 90 degrees. The scenery was very beautiful and consisted of many palm trees. It will be hard to go back to the cold weather at home.
Our travels were not done yet. Driving to our next hotel we got stuck in traffic. Fortunately, there was beautiful scenery to look at along the way. Our hotel is called Tissa's Inn, which is fortunately air conditioned. We then had dinner just a half hour after getting there. We had roti with coconut fish curry, vegetable sabzi curry, and Kerala chicken curry. We also surprisingly had French fries and pasta as sides along with our meal. Even though they tried to accommodate to our American taste, both dishes had an Indian twist. As a group, we wrapped up our day by sharing our favorite pictures we had taken that day.
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