Puri Puri Juggernaut

  Puri, Orissa, India
Friday, June 6, 2008

3rd class train.... in the luagage rack

We arrived yesterday in PURI. On the way here from Berhampur, there was no sitting room left so we traveled here in the luggage racks. We are now in Puri, and it is interesting. This is obviously much more ... catared to foreigners than the rest of Orissa. We visited the Sun temple in Konark and it was interesting. Basically it was really cool, and according to the locals the king that had it built "did" all the women of Puri, and carved stories of his marvelous exploits into the temple (meaning naughty carvings of rock people, and occasionally monkeys, doing things).

Giant Lion thing

We have since nothing to do, and I (mike) made the retarded decision to stay here for three nights by prepaid arrangement, and so we will be here for three days with nothing to do. We rode a camel today, which was spectacularly easy to forget. The lifeguards offered us weed and wouldn't stop. People here super annoying. Won't stop offering us crap. We saw a man who owned some kids on the beach today. His children are to sell random plastic toys and crap on the beach, and one kid, who for one reason or another (be it he didn't sell enough or he stole, or he complained or whatever) made his owner angry. For this he was smacked around and then a couple other "pimps" joined in on pushing him to the ground and kicking him. For a while later I watched as his owner hit him and pushed him and just plain treated him like crap. This was in the middle of several hundred people at the beach. This place sucks serious bad. The beach is where a whole bunch of people go and stand there. The women who go in the water are still fully clothed in their sarees. There were a couple men in who weren't fully clothed, but they were in speedos and for SOME reason were being vigourously rubbed by other men who looked quite eager. Nobody did anything but stand there and stare at the water. Super depressing. HAHAHA at this point sometime, Robert fell. The way it works here in Puri is that all the wastewater is dumped into a main "river" which is composed entirely of the concentrated crap urine and bathwater of the whole city which then runs into the sea. In trying to jump over this black sludge Robert tripped and ended up bathing in fetid ooze. I hope he doesn't die.

The cool part of Puri is that they worship Lord Jagannath, Lord of Chaos, Destruction, and Loose Change. Unlike all the other hindu gods, he doesn't really have a shape or body. He is literally just a smiley face. So they draw smiley faces on things and are like "OMG! it is Lord Jagannath!" As we neared his main temple Jagannath Mandir, we saw the beginnings of their construction of the juggernaut chariot thingy. It is amazing. The size of this is beyond comprehension. For a little estimation stuff here, this cart is pulled by 4,000 people to make it move.  Big.  In front of our hotel is a cow that is covered in bloody puss filled gooey sores and it hasn't moved for days and it just is melting there. I bought a little necklace of Jagannath because he is just that cute. He has arms but no hands, so just has these little stubby things he wiggles around. Yay. He has a brother who also has stubs, and a sister who is just a head (no stubbies) that just rolls around. These are the coolest gods thus far. They are so cute. All they do is roll and wiggle their stubs.

The construction