Exhibition! (Carnival) (Oct. 4)

Our friend Raj has been telling us about this “exhibition” for the past week and how he wanted to go to it with a group of students from the school. He kept telling us that we’d do it all of last week and that didn’t happen. Raj is a great guy with tons of good ideas but you don’t really know if what he says is going to happen until it actually is happening. We also figured out that the “exhibition” is really what we would call a carnival or fair back in the US.

Anyway, we actually ended up leaving for the exhibition around 7 PM and headed over right after stopping by Raj’s house and picking up the rest of the group in the family toy car. (It’s super small) Zach rode in there with the family and I hopped on the back of Raj’s motorcycle and off we went.

The exhibition was pretty cool for being so small. There was a row of vendors selling the usual cheap festival stuff. There were also carnival games, but much more rudimentary than in the US. They had a BB gun shooting booth and a booth where you throw rings at little blocks of wood and if you ring one you get a prize. Another popular one was where you had to try and roll 6 ping-pong balls into little numbered slots and add the numbers up to see what prize you would get. Zach and I played the ring one and the ping-pong ball game a couple times and each walked away with a really cheap LED flashlight that broke literally the 3 time I used it during a power outage…that’s not an exaggeration.

There were also rides like you would see in the US at the fair but with much less of an emphasis on safety. For instance there were no attendants walking around checking to see if you were properly buckled in, but that’s probably because there were no buckles. There were only bars on 2 of the rides we went on but not even a chain across the side of the Ferris wheel that went super fast. You actually achieved a slight feeling of weightlessness on that one! It was super fun to walk around go on the rides but the best part was the food! We had amazing samosas and this other dish that I really wasn’t sure of but it tasted good and they said it was veggie. There were also these crispy “Elephant ear” things that they put chili powder on. It was definitely different but pretty good. We stayed there for a couple hours and then headed back to the hospital.

I thought we were done for the evening but on the way back Raj stopped and picked up some chicken street food that is unique to Nuzvid. Zach and I tried a bite but didn’t eat the rest, partially because we were stuffed and partially because we still haven’t really enjoyed eating meat here…It’s just a bit different when you walk past a couple butcher’s shops around town and see the chickens hanging there in all their glory…

Anyway, it was a pretty fun evening and definitely one of those “India experiences”!