New Years Day in Trichy

Morning at Worrier House. (Pardon the spelling, my spelling reference happens to be in US.) It was fun. We wandered through the whole house, taking many pictures. This is the first time I have really been in the house itself. Yoga and Kalyanam are camping out there, as well as Gowri. who is sick, and Sunkari who went somewhere soon after we arrived. Kannam came, invited us to his house. We went to lunch there. It was DELICIOUS, and had everything in a regular Talli.
Meera was there, she is lovely, and she was an excellent translater, as was Ashwani, who did the translations from Hindi to English..

Then, we had a fantastic experience. We were taken to the Santum Santoum (again, sp. apologies). It was not easy. The Temples were mobbed yesterday because of New Years being somewhat of a holy day. Raja, and Ashwani's providing a decent amount of money got us past the sign saying ONLY HINDUS ALOWED. Descriptions of this experience will come your way eventually. By the way, I gracefully said many times, I will wait out side. Raja insisted.

The beautiful blind in one eye elephant met our expectations. Since we had nothing less than a 50 rupee note, he made out well. (Barbara, he blessed us on the head, no kisses.)

We went to Shrinagar from there, same large crowd and Hindus only. I opted to stay in the car with our very helpful and pleasant driver.

That is about it, except that Ashwani has just returned from the chemist with siperol for me, and I missed the step onto a platform in the bar last night and reinjured my shoulder. I do not think I will manage to get a sivar over my head now. I am truly all right, with just some handicaps. Others will have to manage my luggage onto our 2nd class air conditioned (we hope) sleeper tonight when we go back to Chennai en route to Mahabalipuram.