Bali 2

Here's the second instalment. The famous Kecak Dance and the Fire Dance. Unknown to most tourists, these dances are really religious dances. At the start of the dance, a priest has to sprinkle all participants with holy water.

This is the Kecak Dance. The figure dressed in finery is the Demon.

The pretty girls are good angels. One of them is a dewi which is a goddess but I'm not sure which one. They both look equally enchanting as are evidenced by the bodies strewn on the ground before them.

The good spirits or goddesses

The entire cast

The Fire Dance is an awesome dance. Again, it's religious and at the start of the dance, there is a long ceremony to purify the dancer, a young man on a toy horse. This may seem piffling to most tourists but the tradition of a toy horse used in rituals has a long history in the Malay Archipelago. A variant of this form of spiritual dance exists in neighbouring Malaysia and it's called "Kuda Kepang" or wooden horse. Dancers are reputed to go into a trance as they twirl around with the toy horse. In the Balinese version, the young man proceeds to kick the bonfire and ultimately extinguishes the flame completely. The last pic shows his charred feet. I asked him if there was any pain. He said he felt nothing. He was protected, so he claimed, by the Dewi. But it sure looked painful to me.

Bali

I'll post the pics taken in my short holiday in Bali. I need time to select the better pics. I'll begin with the first set. Later, I'll show many other attractive pics including those taken in a cave temple, a deserted ancient ruins temple, the sea (with me riding the waves on the surfboard, my well-formed muscles gleaming in the sun) and the highlights will be a cremation procession with people dressed as demons and the actual cremation of a live corpse (I mean I took the cremation pics live) - this is a rare sight and National Geographic has offered to buy my pics for billions but I'll keep them private for now.

This is the restaurant we had dinner at the day after we arrived. It looks more like a temple than a restaurant but we got seats over the pond on the left and had a splendid view of the lotus pond and the temple which is a part of the restaurant. There were religious dances later that night.

This is an important temple in Bali. The procession of devotees headed by the priests distinguishable only by the type of sarongs they wear.

Here's where they all take a dip, infants too, for spiritual cleansing.

I'm off to Bali!!

My life is a bit like a whirlwind. Without any notice, I was just asked this morning if I'd like to go to Bali for a few days. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I've got to go. Will upload pics and stories when I'm back.

I LOVE DOGS TOO

I've had many dogs in my time. More pics will be loaded.

MY GREATEST LOVE

This is my greatest love:


And I don't mean the potpourri.

Yipeeee!!!! My first post

Howdy!!! I'm so glad I've been given the green light to post my own blog. I'm only restricted by the following rules:-

No posting of photographs that will identify me
No identification of my name and where I live


While I'll abide by the above rules, I'm an avid photographer and there'll be lots of pics.