Himalayan Festival: Super Summer Saturday's Finale

After our 5K in the morning and Nebo Scenic Loop drive, we went home briefly before heading southward again to Spanish Fork. There the Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple was putting on its annual Himalayan Performing Arts Festival. This was a fun end to our Super Summer Saturday.




We removed our shoes before entering the gift store/restaurant (bottom floor) and temple (top floor). We split a $5 buffet (my second dinner of the evening...but we were about to start our monthly fast, typical of the first Sunday of the month for Mormons!). David wanted to stick fingers into the parrot cage, and wasn't sure he likes his "monkey on the back" leash. But it's a good way for him to be able to walk on his own without getting separated from us.

Upstairs in the temple I mostly ran after David. He is actually very obedient, but still I had to tag after him making sure he didn't pull down incense sticks or statues of temple deities (see these photo from the temple website of Garuda and Jagannath)! Taylor studied this photo of the life cycle of man, and spoke briefly with a member of the temple.




Then we went outside, where there were fish in a pool and llamas in a field. David was fascinated by them.






Finally we watched some dance performances. Taylor afterwards had thoughts about how the Western dance tradition is so different from the Eastern. Most Eastern traditions (including Polynesian) use the hand so expressively in dance. One woman had choreographed an entire story about a visit to the council of the gods, and her hands were the most important aspect of the dance. Since I like sign language, I liked hearing her explain what she would "say" as she danced.




However, the audience (both those that looked like noisy Mormon families -- such as us -- and those that looked like temple members) were terribly rude and raucous. We couldn't hear half the explanation of what would be shown in the dances, which was disappointing. I do wish the temple had more information, so that those of us unfamiliar with their beliefs and traditions could understand better. In the dance hall there were tall poster boards, but they were kind of shoved to the sides for the audience, so I didn't feel there was a way to really learn about what this tradition means.

So the question remains: Why are we sitting under an elephant? <:

I spent a month in India back in 1997, traveling on my own and spending 10 days with my close friend Kausik Rajgopal's family for his father's 60th birthday celebration. Having recently done research on contested religious sites in Israel/Palestine, I spent much of my trip visiting religious sites in India: the Muslim Ibrahim Roza and Golgumbaz of Bijapur, the Vedic cave temples of Badami, the Vittala Temple of Hampi, the gigantic Jain statue in Sravanaveloga, Varanasi, Ayodhya, Agra, the Pink Palace of Jaipur, the Buddhist village of Dharamsala, the Sikh's Golden Temple of Amritsar. (Hey! I need to 1: finish putting labels on all my photos from 12 years ago and 2: scan some of them so I can blog on this amazing country!) I am the type to pour over my travel books (so much so that an Italian "artist" trying to pick up on me told me to let the books go and just soak up the surroundings). I like learning about what I'm seeing. My only complaint about this festival is that I left not knowing very much about what I saw.

Sage brush on the hillside:
Taylor commented that once, this was what all of Utah looked like!