If you thought Spiderman lives only in Marvel comics and Hollywood movies, think again. Spiderman is real, his name is Jyothi Rai and he lives in India. The 22-year-old former builder spends most of his time entertaining tourists by acrobatically climbing Chitradurga Fort. He fearlessly and effortlessly goes up 300-feet-high walls without a safety harness and hundreds of eyes watching from down below. Young mister Rai says he developed his climbing skills by watching monkeys climb trees and trying to reproduce stunts from his favorite films. He hopes he’ll soon be recognized as the world’s greatest climber. The real Spiderman says he has never wore safety equipment and has never had one accident. He believes his ability to see footholds others can’t is proof he was born to climb. He practices every day and does Yoga to maintain his flexibility. A big fan of French climber Alain Robert, Jyothi Rai hopes to achieve his success and one day open a school for climbers. Be sure to watch the video at the bottom, it’s really something! via Telegraph.co.uk

While other two-year-olds are just learning to walk and talk, the children of the nomad Vadi Tribe are introduced to the centuries-old art of snake charming. All the children of the Vadi Tribe come face to face with a poisonous cobra at age two, and go through a ten-year ritual, in which they learn all the secrets of snake charming. Both boys and girls must learn to handle snakes. While men must be able to manipulate cobras by playing the flute, the women must know how to take care of the reptiles when their husbands or brothers are away. The Vadi treat snakes like their own children, never keeping them away from their natural habitat for more than seven months. Any longer than that would be disrespectful to the snakes, according to Babanath Mithunath Madari, the 60-year-old Vadi chief-charmer. In fact, the only time a snake actually bit his charmer, was when he kept it for more than seven months. Vadi snake-charmers don’t cut the fangs of their snakes, instead they feed them an herbal mixture which, they say,  makes their deadly poison harmless. Unfortunately, in 1991, the thousand-year-old tradition of snake-charming was banned in India, and the Vadi tribe are stripped of their snakes whenever they are confronted by the police. They never spend more than six months in the same place. Photos by BARCROFT MEDIA via Telegraph.co.uk

The Karni Mata Hindu temple was built by Maharajah Ganga Singh in the early 1900s as a tribute to the rat goddess, Karni Mata and the most intriguing aspect of it, is that it’s home for over 20.000 worshiped rats. The legend behind this temple is that Karni Mata, a matriarch from the 14th century was a reincarnation of Durga, the goddess of power and victory. at one point one of her clansmen’s child died and she tried to bring it back to life only to be told by Yama, the god of death that he had already reincarnated as a rat. Karni Mata struck a deal with Tama, that all her dead clansmen would reincarnate as rats, until they were ready to be born again into the tribe. It’s a nice story but I can’t stop thinking about how that place must smell… Read More »