Closest I've been to Hollywood...

Ok, I know this is really late, but i'm finally able to sit down and write up my activities from last saturday... yeah ... I mean 10/20/2007 hehehe.


I only had to travel 9,000 miles to finally make it Hollywood. HAHAHA. So I spent the day in Ramoji Film City. It was described to me to be similar to Universal Studios. At 1666 acres, it is the "largest integrated fim studio complex" in the world. The setting was simply magnificent. It is about 25km(~16miles) outside Hyderabad to the South. However, I am staying in the North end of Hyderabad, so combining that distance and the traffic, the drive took about an hour and half. It didn't seem to take that long especially with Chanti, his wife, and her brother as company. On the way, we stopped at a fruit stand just outside the city since I had not eaten breakfast. We picked up a couple apples and an umma granite (see picture to the right). This was an amazingly interesting fruit. Each "cell" that you see can be pulled out whole and is filled with juice. The guy told us this one was seedless, but it clearly wasn't. Each of the little cell's also has a seed. They aren't super hard, taste a little like sunflower seeds. Not sure I can come up with a good comparison for the juice other than it was delicious.
Ramouji Film City is set in an area similar to the Hill Country in Texas. There seems to be a lot of exposed rock surfaces in unique patterns making the entire place feel very majestic and sureal. They've also used the lanscape to their advantage creating impressive temples and houses on large hills to give these locals a more powerful feeling. I mean when you think of traveling to an ancient temple, don't you think about having to climb a million stairs or scale a mountain to get there? Or am I the only one that has seen Batman Returns too many times? There certainly were a ton of interesting gardens and backdrops that Ramoji can use as different movie settings.

hehehe ok, now some real pictures of the gardens and backdrops


Like those better? Just after we went through some of the gardens we entered a mock cave where they had built a replica of several different caves around India, including one with a rather large statue of Buda (the snake picture was taken inside of this cave replica). Inside the cave they had employees wearing gray robes so they would blend in to the cave and not intrude on the guests experience. Lots of people found them scary and started screaming. YAY for 12 year olds!! When we exited the cave, it had started raining heavily so we ducked back inside the cave to stay dry. Imagine 100 people crammed into a 10x10 room and you'll know what it felt like. After the rain stopped, we caught the bus back to the main area of RFC only to find out we had missed the Western Stunt Show. Either that or it had been canceled, I'm not sure. So, we caught another bus out of the park and headed back to Hyderabad.
This was the same weekend as Vijayadashami (aka Dussehra). It is a celebration of good over evil when the Goddess Durga vanquishes the demon* Mahishasura. I was really lucky and Chanti took me to her temple to see the decorations and so they could briefly worship. It was an amazing thing to see. There were lights EVERYWHERE!!


Inside there were strings of flowers hanging from the ceiling and draped to the walls. Yellow and red were the main colors with smatterings of white here and there. In this photo you can see a young girl about the age of 6 or 7 dancing one of the classical dances to the diety. In the background you can see an example of the strings of flowers being draped through out the entire temple. I apologize for the exposure... it was near impossible to get good photos because of not using a flash and all the yellow and red flowers everywhere. We stayed and watched three dances and then left. It was an awesome experience and I'm really glad Chanti and his family were willing to take me to this temple and show me around and explain everything that was going on. The next day were the main festivities and the line to get in to the temple we visited extended around the temple and filled the quarter mile 4 lane road leading up to the temple (this temple is a very popular one for Durga). That night they set off several fireworks in different places around the city. I was not expecting this and started to get really nervous at the first couple "explosions". So I went up on the roof and saw that it was merely fireworks going off on the corner.

Next up: The Charminar

*demon merely means "evil not god" it does not have such a powerful negative conotation as the english meaning behind the word "demon"