I'm Officially a Hindu

FINALLY A BEAUTIFUL DAY!!!

Richy and I were planning on heading into the mountains today but we decided that this beautiful day would be better spent riding the coast on our Tiger 2000's and checking out some temples. These next few days would be especially interesting for us because the Hindu's are celebrating the coming and going of a full moon.

We rode West to the well known temple of Pulaki. This temple is the home to hundreds of monkey's. They are all over the place but as cool as it is to see them, its a shame because they eat all the service offerings. The prayer sessions run all day and we got to participate in one. They begin outside where everyone prepares their offerings and get a blessing to enter the temple. After the group in front is finished and have made their way out, we get to move in and begin our service. We found a place in the back and sat cross-legged on the floor. Since we didn't bring any offerings (we're bad Hindu's...), a family to our left gave us a bamboo leaf basket with various flowers and incense. Everyone faces forward and a man sits on a small platform in the center on the crowd and recited the prayers. Unlike Judaism and Christianity, there is no alter that faces the congregation, the leaders and congregation pray together in the same direction. Every time a new prayer was recited, we place our hands together with flowers and hold our hands to our heads. After the prayer, we place the flowers behind our ears. When all the payers are finished, ushers come around and douse us with holy water and we place rice on our foreheads. While we were doing this with the locals, they all stared at us with big smiles. All the kids were laughing too, I guess we weren't doing everything properly. After the service, all the men go and fill big jugs with holy water to take home to their families for prayer. When the service is over, another begins immediately with a different service leader, male or female.

After the ceremony at Pulaki, we checked out another temple where people kept asking us to take pictures of them. Everyone also wanted to talk to us because they don't get too many tourist's there. In no time we got templed-out and decided it was time for some beach chilling and swimming.

We pulled onto a nice black sand beach near a secluded temple maybe 15 minutes from Pulaki. The sand was amazing. It was much darker than most black sand beaches and it was glistening in the way that cobalt does. The water looks black too because of the sand below but it was crystal clear and cool.

Following our swim, we got back to Lovina in time for sunset and a short nap on the hammocks. Now we prepare for a night out, Lovina style!