Huddled in the courtyard of the Pathini Amman Temple with at least three hundred Tamils ready to watch members of their community walk, let alone dance across hot coals, I was struggling to get a good frame with my handy dandy iPhone to capture what I had only seen in movies.
As the only white person at this very special, religious event called Thimithi, where participants invoke the goddess Draupadi for her spirit to do the impossible (walk on hot coals only after hanging from hooks, but I will get to that in a bit), I had embraced that I was going to stand out.
I had been in Sri Lanka for three weeks teaching yoga in Galle, when I was invited to go “up country” to experience the lush tea plantations, elephant habitations, and forested region of a country that I was quickly falling for.