Tirupati, India

The next leg of our journey was very civilised, as we didn't seem to be able to get beds on anything other than an air-conditioned sleeper carriage. The cleaning staff were really chatty and friendly in our mostly empty carriage. They warned us about the rats and arranged to pick up a bunch of huge biryani meals for everyone by calling ahead to a station in the evening.
When I realised I had left my wallet (containing a couple of hundred rupees or ~8 dollars) on the train after getting off and checking in to a hotel in Tirupati the next evening I ran back and had it returned to me safely by the guy folding blankets. Great people!
The temple in town was pretty cool, and we were introduced to the concepts of 'darshan' and 'aradhana' by some university students. No photos though, as you have to deposit your camera and shoes outside the temple.

The hotel 'boy' was amazingly intrusive, not in a 'tip me' way, it was all quite innocent if that's the right word, but he'd buzz the extremely loud door buzzer repeatedly at odd hours, like 6am, to ask if we wanted coffee. Just to set the scene, our room was fractionally wider and the same length as our single bed, the TV wall-mounted above the foot of the bed and the buzzer above the bed's headboard. Ignoring the buzzing didn't work. I think I rolled out of bed in my pants after the fifth head-splitting buzz and he moved slightly into the room, almost onto my toes, as soon as the door was open. I politely but firmly turned down the offer of tea or coffee and eventually had to close the door in his face. Repeat twice a day. Once he came up to tell us the cricket was on while we were in bed watching a film. We thanked him for the info, pointed at the film we were watching and said we weren't interested in the cricket. He stood in the room and kept telling us the cricket was on. After a minute or two of this we switched channels briefly so he could see the score and shuffled him out.

The nearby Sri Vari temple is the most visited holy site in the world. 30-40 million people a year, and as many as 500,000 on holy days. It hoovers up around 20 million rupees and a 1,000kg of hair a day in donations, and about 3,000kg of gold annually. It's honestly quite difficult to see where all the money goes though, and for secular visitors the appeal of the place is mostly in watching the (often bald) faithful go about their business. It would have taken us about ten hours queuing to reach the temple centre, or only 3 hours if we paid for the fast-track route.

The temple is on top of this hill. We opted not to walk up.
The bus ride down was so fast everyone was clinging to the seat in front.

At dinner we met four wonderful recently tonsured pilgrims from Pune, who kept demanding extra food from the waiter on our behalf, teaching us about Hinduism and history and offering us tours if we ever visited Pune. I snapped a couple of photos while they were busy taking theirs.