Puttaparthi — Jan 28th
27 March 2010, early morning
We travelled off to Puttaparthi from Bangalore for the day. Puttaparthi would have been just another small rural town in India if not for the fact it was home to the religious leader Sai Baba and his ashram. My pictures of Puttaparthi on Flickr. (Or IMG VQVZ) I took these notes to myself on my iPhone, hence the strange change in tense, poor grammar, and what have you.
Jan 28th
Changed hotels. The new one is much nicer.
Bangalore used to be called the Garden City. Now it’s called the Building city. So jokes our driver.
Lots of grape farms outside of the city.
Passed a funeral procession. Well, we were stopped by one. All the people took up most of the road. They streamed around our car.
Puttaparthi is hot. Lunch at the Western canteen is nice. Unsurprisingly, the place is full of White people. They fit in much better than me, dressed in White linin, etc. Well, sometimes.
My mom wanted to use a real bathroom so we grabbed a hotel room for a few hours. Everyone else is taking advantage of the space to nap. Shima doesn’t feel well.
Bumped into Ravi Pillay and his dad outside of the area they do Darshan. We ended up with close up seats to see Swami thanks to them. They are apparently big players here because they are helping expand the new hospital. We haven’t seen them in probably 10 years at least, if not longer. Coincidence!
Darshan was wicked long. Saw Sai Baba. It’s not quite the same as things were 20 years back.
Peed in a pretty scary looking petrol station toilet. Glad I’m a boy.
Indian cities are so dark at night.