Hare Krishna

I've come to find out that it's kind of rare when I get to escape campus, so last Saturday when the opportunity arose to go to India Fest at the Hare Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, I jumped on it! Call me crazy, but I really like learning about other religions. For instance I wear a lucky Buddha around my neck daily, I now know the Hare Krishna chant, I recently bought Tibetan prayer flags for my dorm kitchen, and I actually know what the yoga lady means when she says "namaste" at the end of class. It's just fascinating to me, and a few months ago when we drove by this huge castle-like structure in the middle of farmland in SF, UT, I was intrigued. I found out it was a Hindu temple, and right away I knew I needed to go in there and experience that place!

The opportunity came last week when I was reading the Daily Universe. There it was! The ad for India Fest. I basically counted down the days until Saturday the 12, and then I dragged a few friends with me to experience India for a little. It was so great!

The temple itself is quite an interesting place. You take your shoes off before you go in, and then right inside is a gift shop. This made us all laugh kinda hard. As you walk upstairs there is a big open room with a statue of a monk and other ornate decorations all over. Up there was Hare Krishna music, dancing, and meditation. We ate some good vegetarian Indian food, and t

Here we are!

We got there a little late, so I'm not sure exactly what the premise was of this celebration, but at 9 PM there was the burning of the effigy Ravana.

Fiery darts were thrown...

And Ravana was a thing of the past. Everyone cheered, and then there were fireworks!

Not pictured: the lamas in the background were going CRAZY and running all over the field. Spitting, probably.

Not going to lie, these were some of the best fireworks I've ever seen!

After the burning we were going to leave, but then we got sucked into THIS

A Hare Krishna dance party. Man, I wish our temple had a plaster of paris amphitheater!

Basically this picture is a good representation of what went down at dance party.

After we finished singing "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare" about a trillion times (hence the reason why I've memorized it haha) we took some pictures with Ganesh.

And that, in a nutshell, was my vacation to India!

... and I will be returning for Llama fest and Holi! (Basically you throw chalk at people. So excited!)