Monday 28th February to 6th March 2011
Edie:
This is a holy town called Gokarna. We are staying for the festival of Shivaratri. We are staying in a flat above a shop which backs onto the temple, it is comfy but very hot. We go to the beach every day by rickshaw.
All the guesthouses around here are pretty cheap because pilgrims come from all over India to watch the Shivaratri going on. Pilgrims are people that give their lives or part of their lives to religion.
On the last day of Shivaratri the pilgrims, and some tourists, threw bananas at the chariot while there were people inside. A man in a balcony of a house above us was spitting out paan (chewing tobacco) and it landed on Mum. Our friend went up to complain and we ended up sitting with him in his house watching everyone throwing bananas at the chariots. It was so busy in the small town, there must have been thousands of people.
150 men pulled the enormous chariots up the street by ropes. It was so hot and the chariots were so heavy that the wheels made dents in the tarmac road!
lots of flames
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