Visions.
Next stop was a beautiful Hindu temple. The physical appearance is pretty much indescribable. There are tall five story towers with tens of thousands of colorful statues all over them. They say that India is the land of 300 million gods and this temple started to take a whack at realizing that. We took our shoes off in a little fenced area where a loony looking man was going to guard our shoes. Kannon procured a guide for us, a “student” that spoke pretty decent English, who was something like a combination between an Indian Ben Stiller and an Indian Urkel. He kept cracking jokes and stuff, but he was also kind of clueless. He showed us around, but not much of it was very clear to me because I was starting to hallucinate out of sheer exhaustion. It didn’t help that there was a festival going on, so people were ringing this big bell over and over and over and over. Swarms of people in colorful clothes. A pond with thousands of fish that flop up out of the water by the dozens to eat bread that people are throwing. A bubbling cauldron of catfish. Incense and strange singing. Throngs (and again I mean throngs) of people coming in and out of the temples with red and white stripes all over their foreheads. Western tourists snapping photos and devout locals bowing on the ground. Cows seen through a little window being washed by the priest. Little girls in new saris with bells on their ankles dancing. There was just no way that I could absorb any more stimuli. I could feel my brain shutting down.

As we left we encountered our first really aggressive begging. Crippled men dragging themselves on the ground behind you. Girls of eight or nine carrying babies, chasing after you with big mournful brown eyes. I remember very clinically thinking, “I read an article on the plane about how the baby-for-begging rental business is big business.” I wasn’t even thinking at that point. I was shifting into a different state of mind. Thinking in the first person instead of just thinking. “I need to go,” I was thinking. Matt and Andy were hurting, too, but we knew that we had to keep going or our clocks would never be right again.

Dinner and a Breakdown.
We headed out to a great little vegetarian (like most South Indians eat) restaurant called Annalakshmi. Unfortunately, our driver from the hotel had no idea where it was (despite implying that he did) and he was too proud to call the hotel to ask for directions. He pulls out an Indian phone book and hands it to me. Like I am going to know how the hell to use an Indian phone book. Eventually he called the hotel and handed me the phone. What the hell is wrong with this guy? Like I can take directions to a restaurant in a foreign city. I just handed the phone back to him and told him to deal with it. It was painful because we were in the real home stretch this time. I can’t even begin to tell you how long we had been awake at that point without a decent meal or more than a brief nap. 48 hours? A year? I could figure it out, but I think it would involve calculus.

We ate until we were very full and found out (Matt already knew and I forgot) that the restaurant is a non-profit, completely staffed by volunteers who want to bring the spiritual message of a certain religious leader to the world. The waiters are doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs (couldn’t resist that one), but they take the time out to pass on the teachings of healing through food.

You know that he already knew the answer, but it was great that Matt asked what we all wanted to know: “Do you server alcohol here?”

The response: “No, sir. This place is like a temple.”

We packed up, took the same car back. Matt was nodding off in the back. I didn’t know my own name and Andy was just eerily quiet.

At long last, we settled in to bed and that’s when I started this story for you, dear reader.