Morning-Time Adventures

This morning (after my run and shower, of course) at around 6:35, I decided to go on an adventure, which involves many fun photos, and beautiful scenes.

To begin, I found these pretty flowers. Pretty colors!

I then went to the a wishing tree at a small temple close to the school. Our guru, Naval Krishna sir, assures me that the tree is magical, and that you always will have your wishes granted there. I took a couple of pictures so you can understand what a roadside temple looks like:

I then went over to the ghat closest to us- that’s assi ghat in case you were wondering, and was going to stop and get my favorite tea (honey-lemon-ginger), but the shop wasn’t open yet. Most shops don’t really open until 8am or so, despite the fact that the streets are bustling at 7 or earlier depending on where you are. People are out the earliest closest to the Ganga and temples for religious reasons.

Here is a picture of the area close to the river.

Here is a sidestreet close to Assi.

A poster for the movie that we saw (Delhi Belly). Note the tagline, which is literally: S#!T happens.

I then walked around over to a mall, encountering the commercial side of life and a great sign.

I like to think of myself as a “professional,” personally.Definitely not professional though...

I also ran into some monkeys (always a mildly terrifying experience). In the olden days, monkeys were protected (just as cows still are), as they were considered to be the reincarnation of Lord Hanuman. However, to quote Jay (one of our friends here), “they became such a nuisance that no one believes that anymore.” He also thinks that people have stopped taking cow protection as seriously, and gives the examples of trucks that take cows out of cities. 

Here are some monkeys:

I also stopped by a very famous temple in Varanasi, but didn’t go in because I forgot my scarf to cover my head. I’ll go there soon though. I took some pictures, at least. 

I stopped by another temple as well, called the Shri Satyanarayan Tulsi Manas Mandir. As you can see from this picture, it’s made out of this beautiful white stone, and they have a small gardens. One interesting thing is that this temple is more of a Rama-Hanuman temple, and less of a Shiva temple, despite the fact that Varanasi is a Shiva place. The temple is also pretty new, being blessed in 1964. 

I also had a chance encounter with some greenspace, even though it was covered in trash (see foreground):

On the way back, I got to see a cow chilling in my favorite building, and I picked up some jalebi as a breakfast treat for everyone at work. Nom nom nom!