Wedding and Birthday

Yes, dear readers, the Hanuman from the temple looks like he has something wrong with his face. I don't know why they painted those parts orange. Up close it looks like spray paint. That's one reason I didn't want to go to that temple - ugly monkey. There are several other statues in town I've seen shots of that are much nicer to my eyes.
The shot above is another image of Hanuman. This is one of the little dashboard icons I bought at the temple. You can see he's a monkey dude, but he often gets a cat-like face.
Anyway, this morning started off with a groom making a fuss.
There are a lot of weddings at this hotel, or wedding parties anyway. Today a bad started boomboom-booming away at an early hour. I looked out the window at length and saw them doing a blessing of some sort, them they started galavanting down the street in front of this dude on a horse.

He looped around the block so it was quite for a while. Then as he was about to come back, they set of a jillion firecrackers to announce his triumphant return to the hotel. Like he had done something important or something.

I was pretty whatever about it. This isn't the first Groom Brandishing Sword On Elaborate Horse that I've seen this trip. The first one I got shots of, though. Thank you 300mm lens.
At dinner at work we had a celebration of a different kind.

Shawn's birthday was today. We got him a cake and so did our counterparts. These are some of them here:

In India they have another tradition where they shmear cake in birthday boy's face. We all knew it was coming, but it was funny anyway. They got him a great card that everyone signed and a local keepsake. The effort shown was really nice.

After the cake thing, Sham (shown above) and I are chatting and he tells me that there is another Indian tradition called Birthday Boots where the celebrant is lifted up and everyone takes turns kicking him. I wasn't so sure about that, but they all seemed convinced. I asked how it was done and they said you just go over and pick him up and they kick him. I still wasn't quite sure, but I went over to Shawn and picked him up. Of course all the Indians laughed at me for falling for it and no one kicked him. Shawn hurriedly sat down after that. I think it was pretty foolish of me now.