Above – A dog’s (closed) eye view. This happy, healthy and very content dog enjoyed a Samadhi in Alandi.

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The people of Alandi are among the most beautiful and nicest people I’ve ever met. They come here from all around to pay homage to the site where Saint Dnyaneshwar took his last Samadhi. It’s a very holy pilgrimage village where it’s common to see people praying, meditating and reading the Bhagavad Gita on the temple grounds. Photos aren’t allowed on the temple grounds, but there are plenty of photo opportunities everywhere else.

I think it’s important to say most of the people in Alandi aren’t accustomed to seeing westerners so we get a lot of attention in the friendliest of ways.

The banks of the Indriyani River where people swim, bathe, wash clothes and many other things.

I took a photo of some men on a wall which turned into a dominos effect.

You’ve gotta love these two characters.

These two were more interested in me photographing their food and them eating it. They wouldn’t let me take the photo until they were all set to take a bite.

Such a sweet boy.

There’s Jill taking a selfie.

A me selfie.

Then of course a great big group photo.

Here’s looking down the river.

The opposite view up the river.

It’s really not hard to get a photo of this many people. All it takes is two Westerners holding a cell phone taking photos. Next thing you know, the object of the photo multiplies.

This man spoke very good English and stuck around to translate while Nana went to the toilet.

Beautiful kids …

Beautiful women.

Young family.

Here’s the marketplace on the walk to the temple.

Offerings to place at the altars.

We each became a “warcari.” In 2015 two boys put the paint on our brow. This year it was two holy men.

When we arrived at the river people were setting up a stage for some sort of celebration, which may have been for Independence Day. I took a video to capture the moment.

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Today is Independence Day. It’s 10:15pm, live music is still playing loudly somewhere nearby and there have been fireworks going off the past couple hours that we can see from the window in our flat. I’m guessing it will be quite a while before the noise settles down and I’ll be able to go to sleep.

Because there were no classes today my flatmates and I left the house early for a walk to Ferguson College where we took a hike to the top of a small mountain and where I took a ton of photos (go figure). The campus is beautiful and the people there are very friendly, but you’ll have to wait until I get through my Alandi photos before I share those.

Tomorrow class doesn’t start until 9:30am so I get to sleep in, whatever that means since the birds in the park wake me up around 4:45am every morning.

btw, Bruce brought to my attention that my featured image (“Women carrying their laundry to wash in the Indrayani River…” ) yesterday was missing. I fixed that so if you scroll down just a bit to yesterday’s post you will see it. I think it’s one of the best photos of my trip so you don’t want to miss it.

Also, if you’re a new subscriber to my blog and you receive emails notifying you when a new post is published, you’ll want to click on the caption in your email to view the blog online. Otherwise you’ll miss the featured images which are typically the best photo of the post.

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Blogged on Amma’s iPhone and MacBook from iNdia with LOVE!