When we returned to Chandoori Sai from our loop hike in mid afternoon, Leon (the owner) advised us that he had been invited to a village wedding celebration and his guests were welcome too. The wedding ceremony would have already taken place earlier in the day, but the party would begin in late afternoon.

Few travel experiences are as rich as attending a true traditional celebration or festival in a rural area - think about how most travelers only see staged events called "cultural performances" put on for tourists . This would be the real thing.

In late afternoon we all put on our best shorts and flipflops and walked out to the village with Leon. We came across a very sad looking bride, because a wedding in India (apparently in these tribal areas too) means the bride leaves her family and joins the groom in his family's household. If she has a nasty new mother-in-law she might well become her virtual slave. Ha!

The celebration started out with a feast. We knew we would have our own feast waiting for us upon return to our lodge so resisted invitations to join in the food. There did seem to be some meat served, but it looked mostly like mass quantities of standard fare like rice, lentils, and vegetable curries, all washed down with large quantities of moonshine. It appeared many of the celebrants had started early because many were barely able to walk a straight line even at dinner. 

Then the music began from up the road a few hundred meters . A vehicle equipped with a major sound system blared recordings of traditional music from its roof accompanied by some drummers. As it moved slowly down the road with long stops the dancing began. There were two main types of dance, one a kind of gyration to the beat that mostly younger men participated in together in the road and the second a kind of snake dance where both men and women lined up, put one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them, and moved rapidly forward and in and out in unison. They clearly knew what they were doing in this traditional dance. They invited us to join in, but we foreigners were of course totally uncoordinated at it.

The dancing continued and became ever more frenetic as dusk approached and the celebrants became more inebriated on the local hooch. I took tons of pictures, but some of the vidoes I have that I'll post to Facebook give a much better sense of the experience.

I think we foreigners felt very honored to attend such a wedding celebration, but we also kept hearing from those who spoke some English that "We are so honored that foreigners would come and see us and spend time in our poor village!" We left at dusk to return to a big Italian-oriented feast at Chandoori Sai but heard the celebration continuing through the night.....and even as we left in the pre-dawn darkness at 5:30 the next morning.