Sankranti

Thursday January 14th was the Sankranti Festival. Yep, another festival here. This time it is the "Kite Festival" from what I understand. The kids and Alan had the day off so we decided to make a day trip to Mysore.

Before we got out of town we saw people leading their cows down the street and they saw us taking pictures. The one cow has a parasitic twin coming out of his head. "It's a prodigy" NICE!

On the way down we saw a place where they were selling and trading cows. It was pretty neat to see.

We stopped at a Hindu Temple. We were definitely out of place inside.

Lunch at McDonalds. The kids meals of course came with a kite. Our driver had never eaten there before so we bought him lunch.

Mysore Palace

As we walked up the sidewalk to the Palace Ethan spotted some men making something and he wanted to help. They sold us some sugar cane juice and Ethan helped to squeeze it.

Our family outside Mysore Palace

The Elephant ride at Mysore Palace

This is me driving the Elephant!!

Ethan and Alan on the Camel

"The Bull"

At "The Bull" we started to walk up to it. A man handed each of the kids some flowers and a newspaper with a potpourri thing inside. We have no idea what we are doing, apparently we did some Hindu Prayer without even knowing it. We got back in the car and the driver asked how we got the bracelets. We told him, and he showed us his. He had been to his temple that morning for Sankranti.

Our kids were getting tired by this point so we started to head back to Bangalore. It's about a 3 hour drive and on the way back Vijay was telling that Friday the 15th of January is the Cow Festival, but because of the Solar Eclipse (see other post), they were having ceremonies on the 14th. We came up to a place in the road where the road was closed, and then ahead of us we saw a HUGE fire!! I thought for sure it was an accident on the road and people were very hurt. As we approached we saw this:

They were making the cows run through fire to show that they were healthy or something. We parked the car and Alan and Vijay walked back to video. I didn't want the kids to get too close. Ellie was crying because she wanted to go too. Maddie was really worried about the cows and asked "What if they get burned?" Ellie through her tears answered. "We'll have to have hamburgers for dinner!"