Will and the Love Cow - 29th April 2006

I bumped into Will in the garden in the morning and was yapping away with him for a half an hour or so, he had been here five years ago and it was interesting to hear how much the town had changed in that time. Turns out the town didn’t even have a phone connection back then! Liz then came out of the room and some guy they know (Andy from Telford) dropped in, so we all went to lunch. I had an omelette and chips and was absolutely stuffed after it (first time I’ve had lunch in ages), and it was nice to have some plain food.

We sat in the restaurant for about two hours and Liz went off to check her email and Andy left about twenty minutes later to have a siesta. As Will and I were sitting there, one of the owners kids came out and put a deck of playing cards on the table in front of me and motioned to me to shuffle them. That is how I ended up playing cards with the owners four children for two hours! I hadn’t a clue what game we were playing initially, but it turns out that it’s a bit like Rummy. I went back to the guesthouse after that and met up with Will and Liz and we decided to go to one of the local temples to watch prayers.

The temple opens at 20:00, so we had about ¾ of an hour to kill and we sat in the square and ended up talking to loads of pilgrims and playing chasing with the kids. There are a couple of vultures that roost on the roof of the temple and they look majestic. Tomorrow we are going to go there at 17:00 and climb to the roof and we can watch them nest for the night – I just hope that they will have had sufficient food and don’t fancy a foreign take-away. Some of the little kids have got black make-up around their eyes and it looks like they are into Goth music, but apparently the make up is to make them look ugly to the Spirits so that they won’t take their kids away from them. I got some good photos and will try and post them on my site, if I can find a fast enough Internet connection.

At 20:00, we made our way into the temple and had to hand over our footwear, bags, cameras and any leather objects we had or were wearing. When we went in there were about 100 worshipers in there (not very many by normal standards) and they were chanting in front of two statues. Some people were lying prostrate on the floor and others were going around kissing the floor and steps. In the midst of this, kids were running around, doing forward rolls, trying to nick our water and having a good time. About fifteen minutes in everyone started clapping hands, singing loudly and turning around in circles. I have five or six vinyl records of gospel music which was recorded in the southern states of America in the early 1900’s (Willie Lomax re-issues) and this is the closest I’ve come to hearing something similar in real life, it was absolutely fascinating and we got loads of greetings from the Sadu’s (holy men).

The prayers lasted for forty-five minutes and we went to have something to eat at a restaurant that Liz, Will and Andy knew sold beer. We sat there for three hours and shared five beers between us, and Will and Andy had to fight off the advances of an amours cow! It really was quite funny as the cow came along and started licking Andy’s arm (presumably to get the salt off it) and then the back of his neck. A couple of VIP’s from the BJP party sat down at the table next to us (the owner told us who they were) and all the time that sat there they were giving Liz dagger looks, presumably because she was sitting with three men and drinking and smoking. Although they did lighten up when the “love cow” came back and started licking Will, I felt really rejected as I was the only one the “love cow” didn’t make a move on!