40/ 100 Four Feet Dog

Yesterday I wrote a little bit about the possible reasons so many people in Varanasi seem to prefer to walk around without any shoes, even though the ground beneath their feet is a very long way from the kind of surface I would consider to be ideal barefoot-walking territory.

Today I wanted to mention two places in particular where you definitely have to remove your shoes (and socks), and this isn’t only in Varanasi, but in the whole of India.

• When you are visiting any form of temple.
• When you are entering someone’s house (or your guesthouse).

Since many of the little temples look like regular, albeit old, buildings they can sometimes be hard to spot. Especially in places such as Varanasi, all the buildings and doorways in a street can be beautifully ornate and adorned with religious artefacts so it’s hard to tell whether it is a Hindu mandir or just someone’s house. One surefire giveaway to the location of a place of worship, though, is that there will be a pile of shoes and sandals outside the door.

Interestingly there seems to be an unwritten rule that you would never steal shoes from outside a temple, I’d imagine that the level of bad karma you’d achieve would be catastrophic. I was always a little worried about leaving my nice walking shoes in amongst the flip-flops so I asked our friend if anyone ever takes them and he said he had never once heard of it happening. Shoes and socks are the first items to be removed before entry, then the levels of pre-visit preparation can increase from there.

In many temples you have to then wash your hands, and occasionally your feet. If you are visiting a Jain temple (Jainism is one of the world’s oldest religions in India, where its followers are known for their ethical lifestyle, vegetarianism, and contributions to philosophy) you also have to leave behind anything made from animal products such as a leather belt. Never wear leather underpants or it could get awkward. You also need to leave water outside as they only drink filtered water to prevent any accidental consumption of any living organisms. It’s worth the hassle though because their temples are absolutely fascinating and many have a lovely peaceful garden to sit in.

If you visit someones house, and even many guesthouses, you are asked to leave your shoes outside. At the very minimum, if you are staying there, you will need to keep your shoes out of your bedroom. It is not uncommon for places to have a rack of communal sandals to wear once you are inside your house, or you can do what we do and just bring your own. With the extremely high likelihood of traipsing some kind of undesirable substance into the house on your shoes it really makes a lot of sense and it’s nice to know that the floors indoors are kept very clean.

As a little side story, in one of the places we stayed Fiona’s sandals went missing. After some frantic searching by the guesthouse owner they surmised that a visiting priest had used them thinking they were one of the communal pairs, but he was then missing too. It really was like a whodunnit mystery and an embarrassing number of people were called upon to help locate these sandals.

We went to bed that night, mentally exhausted after first the delight of finding a Birkenstock shop right where we were in Jaipur, but then also discovering that it was much more expensive than here at home. In the morning I opened our door and there, on the doormat, were Fiona’s blue Birkenstocks. They had obviously been fastidiously cleaned to almost-new condition and she now considers them to be extra-holy.