The bus ride as always was crowded and uncomfortable. Nothing against the hired driver, but there's no possible way to comfortably shove thirteen people in a van and then drive them two hours from their home while weaving through traffic and dodging potholes large enough to bathe in. As someone who suffers from motion sickness, this time is spent (mercifully) in the front row of the van, eyes pressed closed and forehead against the window praying with each moment that you will not be involved in a head-on collision and that you're just about to your destination.
It's with much gratitude that we finally spill out of the van in what can only be described as a clown-car effect. This is especially entertaining for the locals since there's so few foreigners in the area, so they must think that we really do all travel squished together in packs. If you see one of us, the rest are usually shortly behind.
Now it's a major sigh of relief to see that the trail for this hike is significantly easier than the one we did two weekends ago. Namely because there is an actual trail, that is a steady incline and includes areas where stairs of brick and stone have been shoved into the crumbling mud. Last time, if you remember, we essentially forged our own way by scaling waterfalls and hoisting ourselves up tree vines.
After a very short hike, we end up at the first in the series of three temples. This is larger, with a covered courtyard in the center surrounded by smaller individual rooms where statues and fountains and other religious icons were. Entering these temples meant the removal of shoes - a solid rule for most Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist places of worship in the region.
Little boy at the entrance of one of the temple rooms. A small plate with food are left out as offerings.
Priest went from room to room dusting incense smoke (like a thurible in many Christian practices). Woman stands by waiting for him to finish. Immediately after the priest leaves she came forward and kissed the base where the statue stood and gave her prayers.
Temples like these are not quite places of worship like Christian churches often are. They're loud and vibrant, with drums and ululations (youtube it) and dogs barking. It's much more festive on a daily basis and the noise and smell of incense really encompasses the senses.
Entrance to the temple complex. If you're interested in learning how this temple is a sacred spot where a Hindu goddess dropped her right elbow, check the wiki page about it.
From there we continued onwards and upwards to the next temple in the series. The hike was easy but the view was astonishing. From each section you could see more clearly how the hills gave way to flat land before reaching the Bay of Bengal in the distance.
The rolling hills themselves were lush and vibrant green, and while we hiked our way up tendrils of fog rolled their way in from the ocean and began blanketing the hills. The first temple higher up the mountain was actually quite small. We didn't linger beyond looking around. At that point the weather looked like it was starting to turn so we hurried onwards to the next temple area.
The second temple complex was on top of a neighboring mountain/hill (really, what's the cut-off for that?).
Here's the above temple from close to the next hill we climbed. By then the fog was pretty thick.
The hills was insanely green and rolling, like if you were just a smidgen larger you could use the tops as stepping stones and walk north until hitting Nepal. At that point we relaxed for a bit, Holly got bitten by a leech (so now we're two for two on weekend hiking trips and leech bites), and finally headed back down. And of course as soon as we headed down the fog cleared and the sky became a beautiful clear blue. Oh well, what can you do?
Not sure what this was.
That's all for now!
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