Mangalore and Shree Gokarnanatha Temple

2 "elephants" greeted us at the entrance to temple grounds.The main temple.

This was also on temple grounds. One of these statues was in each of the four corners of a pool below and there were colored spotlights - this reminded me of Las Vegas. It was so neat but unexpected on temple grounds!




Something I am very quickly learning about India is that you will be fed everywhere you go. This was our morning snack at the polio clinic - upma. It was delish! The white half was salty, and the yellow half was sweet. Generally you got a little bit of each a bite. The upma's are wrapped in banana leaves to help them retain some of the oil, and the leaves are wrapped in newspaper. Probably yesterday's edition of The Times of India. I hope that we learn to make upma in our upcoming cooking classes.

Today was another touring day - this time in Mangalore. We went to a water park, shopping mall, a professor's home, and finally to a temple. Highlights included:

- Waterparks are different in India. No-one wears just swim trunks or bikinis. All of the men wore shirts and shorts, and many women went down the waterslides fully clothed. No cameras were allowed in - so no picts.

- We checked out the mall in Mangalore. I discovered my new fave store, FabIndia - check them out at www.fabindia.com. I treated myself to a bargain new bedspread which makes me love my room (update - I have been burning a lot incense and it finally seems to be getting rid of the ant spray smell).

- We had lunch at a restaurant at the mall. It was actually GREAT Indian food!

- One of our professors here, Dr. Lobo, lives in Mangalore. He invited us all to come to his home. It turns out that his home was built by his family many years ago, and feels more like a museum than a house - truly amazing to find a place like this in India. In typical Indian fashion, Dr. Lobo's wife put out a huge spread of desserts for us to enjoy. Unfortunately we had just eaten a very large lunch. We all loosened our waistbands because to have had no dessert would have been an offense.

- Even though it was getting late we decided to go by a temple. We were all so glad that we did! We visited Shree Gokarnanatha Temple, which was redone in recent times. I couldn't find any information about it in my guidebook, but it was amazing. It was a brightly lit and lively place at 8PM on a Saturday night. Admission to the temples is free, so you will see families, tourists, priests, school groups - all kinds of folk meditating, praying, observing. There were live musicians in the main temple, many prayer services, and the smell of the incense in the air . . . it was an unforgettable experience.

Because of insecurity with regard to vaccine effectiveness (re: temperature control issues) and the fact that children with incidence of diarrhea (very common here) will not properly absorb the vaccine, they opt to vaccinate children every year from ages 0-5. I wonder if they will ultimately discover adverse effects from this practice like increased risk of cancer or autism from vaccine preservatives. India's public health system is very far away from looking at the effects of environmental exposures; for right now the policy is that preventing polio is priority one for these children. In the US you are vaccinated once as a child, and then possibly again as an adult; I received a polio booster shot just before this trip because India has a high incidence of the disease.