When we got to Mahabaleshwar, we had reservations to stay at the second-to-cheapest hotel that was listed in the Lonely Planet India guidebook, the Blue Star Hotel. We wanted what was essentially a place to camp out before hiking around outside, which was good, because that was all we got. The room was clean, located on the main road, and free of mosquitos. There were no phones, no internet, no matching sheets, no toilet paper, no functional toilet, and no running hot water. We got hot water once a morning. At about 8 am, without being asked, the hotelkeeper would wake us up by knocking on our door to ask how many buckets of hot water we would like, while roosters crowed insistently outside. Yes, seriously.
On top of that, we discovered that Mahabaleshwar is a popular place that people visit to do puja, and it happens to be festival (ie, religious holiday) season in general, and the holiday of Dusshera in particular. At the end of the main road, there was a devotional stage with painted plaster statues and lots of flowers set up. The stage also had an electric "Om" light that looked like it was produced by the same places that make "Open" signs. This juxtaposition of ancient devotional sound and modern electronics greatly amused me, but I decided not to take a picture in case anyone would be offended.
There was devotional music that started at about eight or nine at night, and continued until about three in the morning. The music was a mixture of pop-beat, Bollywood-style religious songs and traditional chanting, with (very loud) live drummers that created a pounding, underlying base beat. This place was a few hundred feet from the hotel room, so we heard it all night long as we tried to sleep after walking around on trails all day. My mind kept incorporating the music into the dreams I was having, which gave me dreams about being at some very strange parties.
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