Ma taketh away and Ma giveth!

I went from Puttaparthi to Srisailam, a very sacred pilgrimage spot that Amma recommended going to in Her talks at the retreat right as I was thinking "where should I go Ma?"
So once upon a time there was a village where the people were doing rituals without understanding their symbolic significance. Lord Shiva came to visit, and His body shone with such an immense light from His austerity that all the women couldn't control themselves and threw themselves at Him. All the men became upset at this, so they attacked Shiva and tore off His penis. His penis grew to such immense proportions that Vishnu had to cut it up with his discus into 12 pieces to save the town, and where those pieces landed are called "jyotir-lingas". Also, once upon a time Shiva's first wife, Sati, immolated Herself in fire to protest Her father's disrespect to Her husband (Shiva walks around naked covered in snakes and the ashes of the dead and hangs out with ghouls, so Her dad wasn't too happy and was bad mouthing Him). Holding His dead wife's body, Shiva started His terrible tandava dance of destruction and to save the humanity, again Vishnu sent his discus and cut Sati's body into 18 pieces, where these pieces landed are called "shakti-pithas".
Srisailam is very sacred because it's home to both a jyotir linga (Mallikarjuna Swami) and a shakti pitha (Bhramaramba Devi). It's also a place that Lord Rama and Sita visited during their years of renunciation and a place where King Shivaji did his meditation because of the spiritual environment.
After a long bus ride, with a break for lunch that saw the bus raided by monkeys!, we started climbing hills and entering into beautiful forest. A funny thing happened to me. I started to feel such a sense of comraderie with the others on the bus, I thought at first it was just the feeling, "isn't this so special that we're all making this pilgrimage together!" But the feeling kept growing. The mountains felt familiar, like I knew this place from before, and the feeling kept growing. It all started to feel familiar in every sense. Like I had been on that bus with these people making this journey a thousand times and I felt we were all going home. The kids on the bus felt like my nieces and nephews, the men my brothers and the women my sisters. The feeling kept growing the more the bus climbed and the closer we got to Srisailam, I felt so much LOVE and so much joy at being home! A white light, a sweet light of motherly comfort, permeated the air and I felt the presence of the L*rd. When we finally arrived, I stepped off the bus high as a freakin kite. I want to say now that despite all that happened to me at Srisailam, that feeling of familiarity never left the whole time.
So I start searching for a hotel and this man, also a lone pilgrim, joins me. We goto three different hotels and each one says that they don't give out single rooms. This happened to me at Thirupatti also and I ended up sleeping outside with the mosquitos, it turns out that the state of Andhra Pradesh is afraid of people commiting suicide at pilgrim sites so they don't give out single rooms (!? wtf?). So I ask this man, he seemed really nice and un-assuming, if he wanted to share a room, and he agreed. We take a bath, and then go for darshan.
Darshan was too powerful to put in words, so I won't even try. But I will say that after bowing to the Linga, I was so filled with the Divine Spirit that I was walking out of the darshan hall and this woman wasn't watching where she was going and bumped into me. When she turned around and looked at me, I don't know what she saw, but she bowed down to my feet! I tried to stop her, but then her kids came and touched my feet, and four more kids came out of nowhere to touch my feet! I gave up trying to stop them and did what I've seen Ram Dass and Bhagavan Dass do when people bow to their feet-- throw up your hands to the most high and do your mantra like crazy. It amazes me that they saw me with the Divine that much, even as a foreigner. I'm starting to understand so much about these rituals-- they're really not nonsense at all!! When you're filled with THAT MUCH LOVE for the creation, and are overwhelmed THAT MUCH by the glory of it all, your heart seeks every way it can to celebrate it and you can see so plainly where the spirit is in its varied concentrations. The rituals are both a natural EFFECT of this supreme Love and can serve as its CAUSE, they're a perfect expression of unity.
Me and my pilgrim friend went and had dinner, and then retired to the room. I stayed up talking with him for a while, and, keeping with the energy feeling of Srisailam so far, again felt great comraderie. When we went to bed, he even said to me, "my new American friend" :).
I woke up at about 330am and he was gone. So was my bag with my money/passport, and the hotel room, which all work with padlocks, was locked from the outside so I was trapped. I yelled for over an hour for help, the staff kept coming up and wondering what I was yelling about, asking me for the key to the room, and I couldn't explain in English to them that my roommate had stolen my key and bag. Finally, they sensed my freaking out (and heard me trying to break the door open) enough that the owner came and broke the padlock off. Ironically, even though I HAD to put on the show of freaking out, and had to look and play the part of the foreigner that's been robbed, the whole time inside I still felt so great. Weird, I know. I ran around town looking for my 'friend' and then went to the police.
I was skeptical about the police because all I heard from friends is that they're corrupt and inefficient. I won't argue about efficiency, because nothing here is efficient, but the police treated me, literally in every way possible, as their own son. First the chief inspector berates me for not coming to the police first when I couldn't get a single room, just like a dad, and then showers me with motherly love, giving me tea, buying me breakfast, giving me a PERSONAL POLICE ESCORT through the town who chaperoned my pilgrimage and got me through the long lines, kept away the beggars, and made sure I got to see all the holy sites of Srisailam-- many of which were not listed on any tourist map! I saw the place were Siddiyarama Swami jumped off a cliff and was rescued by Lord Shiva, I saw the meditation site of King Shivaji and found there impossible to find books on Sri Vidya, my principle practice! (these books actually say, "not to be exported outside of India" on them!)
I had darshan of Mullikarjuna Swami and Bhramaramba devi three more times and with no line! I witnessed a puja to Devi and recognized the mantras the priest was chanting from my own practice, when the police chaperone noticed me reciting them, he told the priest and the priest came out and gave me this huge bag of kumkum prasad and gave me instructions on when to take it and how to chant daily. I mean this is the main priest in charge of caring for one of the most sacred sites to the Goddess in India! He sat with me for an hour and we chanted the Lalita Sahasranama together and he invited me to come back and see him anytime. My practice grew in leaps and bounds that night!
The hotel staff found my bag near the hotel! Everything was in it except my Rupees, about $200 worth, and my traveller's checkes. Passport, credit cards, everything else was in tact! So, I'm finding out now if I can redeem the checks ($1000 worth, yeesh), but if it comes down to it, $200 was a SMALL price to pay for these blessings.
If this pilgrimage keeps going like this, I'm not sure I'll be able to keep expressing it! Dear reader, please forgive any lapses in my recounting. This journey is working me deeper than words.