Feb 21, 2005 - Day 230 in Guruvayer, India

Today we saw in the paper that there was an elephant race with 48 elephants at a temple about 100 miles away. By the time we got there, the elephants were arriving at the finish line, inside the temple. The elephant race was interesting, the elephants raced into the temple, the first elephant to touch his trunk to a statue is the winner. The whole event took about 15 minutes. We knew this was an important event for the temple because of the masses and throngs of people gathered around. The police were trying to keep people out of the path of the stampeding elephants. The last day of this festival would be great, with so many elephants parading. We ran into a different temple festival on the way that turned out to be more interesting than the elephant race in Guruvayer. This is festival season here, so it is also the season for traffic jams. Since traffic was at a standstill, we got out to see what this festival procession looked like. Lots of music and young men in lines of 6 or 8 with a long metal rod carried in the mouths of each line. Each rod had limes or other fruits skewered here and there between mouths. Each line of men danced while holding their place on the skewer, one line after another. There were elaborate costumes for other participants. There were boys wearing a wood framed rack of flowers, (or fake flowers) on their shoulders and head, they would spin around quickly.