For a traveller, losing a camera is a rite of passage. So is tasting a durian, getting lost in a new place and staying in a haunted hotel. And sometimes the stories that you hear on the journey, fascinating, funny and sad, are the best part.

Many years ago, during a road trip of Odisha on account of a friend’s wedding, we visited a temple in a small village in Andhra Pradesh, close to the Odisha border. It was ancient and was known for its carvings. I got talking with the priest, a friendly man who looked resigned and undernourished.

The temple was suffering for want of funds, he told us. The hereditary trustee was the heir of an erstwhile royal family and the priest and locals thought they would ask him for a grant to maintain the temple better. So they begged and borrowed and scraped together Rs 5,000 and felicitated the trustee when he visited next.

“We spent money on fireworks and a horse-drawn carriage to honour him, hoping he would be impressed and lend us an ear and grant our wish,” said the priest. “But all the pomp and ceremony gave him the impression the temple was doing well and he went away without granting us a pie,” said the priest. It has probably been eight years since that trip. While I don’t remember the carvings or the deities, the priest’s helpless and beaten smile has never left me.

On a more recent visit, we visited Tallapaka, the birthplace of 15th century composer and poet Annamacharya, in Andhra Pradesh’s Cuddapah district. There is a temple/memorial dedicated to him there, which also houses the idol of a man called Eka Tatayya. Apparently, he was a local elder, and the legend is that touching your forehead to his is supposed to cure you of migraines and headaches. I did, but like other prayers, it probably needed a lot of faith to work!

Perhaps for the same reason I didn’t experience any haunting when I stayed at a certain hotel in Taipei on an official visit. It has a big reputation for being haunted. According to travel forums and other sources on the Internet, it now stands where once either a battlefield or a prison for executions stood, and has made it to several lists of the world’s most haunted hotels. There are stories of how people, including famous personalities, saw ghosts and spirits there and left, swearing to never come back. The hotel, the Internet says, dealt with it by getting Feng Shui experts to realign its Chi by putting protective calligraphic scrolls in the lobby.

And you also realise that sometimes you are lucky enough to see some sights that were in a forwarded email about ‘weird statues and sculptures around the world’. In my case, it was the Mona Lisa built from old motherboards and computer chips at computer firm Asus’ headquarters in Taiwan. I don’t have a picture, it was during that trip that I lost the camera. Hopefully, I won’t lose it again and will have pictures to show you when I travel again.

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