Hampi

A friend of a friend mentioned to my friend who mentioned to me that Hampi looks like where the Flintstones live.  The friend of my friend who relayed this to my friend who told me was quite correct!  Minus the dinosaurs the landscape was all there.  It even seemed to repeat the same 4 scenes as you walked by just like when they are off for a run or drive powered by Fred's feet!

The place is boulder heaven, or rather boulder earth, in boulder heaven all the boulders would probably get leighed as they arrived.  Although some might look like they are wearing Leighs as the Hindu festival of Holi just passed I am pretty sure the rocks don't know up from down and are vibrating at another level than us.


So picture mountains made of boulders and heat so hot the eggs fry inside the shell.  It is even reported that a gecko dropped 3 eggs 2 of which were cooked inside!  The ideal time to be awake in Hampi is between 5am and 10am as well as 6pm to 10pm although I was rarely up that late!

To get to Hampi we took a bus at around 10am leaving Ooty for Bangalore, which we reached around 7pm.  We found a night bus to Hampi laving a few hours later and had some grub and an internet break.  The night bus had beds like a sleeper train and was quite comfy!  Of course the bus couldn't go to Hampi, it stopped in Hampi's bastard brother town Hospet, controlled by the Tuk Tuk Mafia so you could pay another 100 rupees to go to Hampi.  Then when you reach Hampi you need to hire a boat to cross the river to get to the guesthouses!  Yup, another Mafia...apparently someone tried to build a bridge that mysteriously collapsed!

So we crossed the river and settled in at some incredibly early hour.  The first day was appointed a do nothing day in the hammocks and it was fine!

Hampi was a one day on one day off schedule, fully necessary.  We stayed at Goan corner, as suggested by Ido, a friend from Thailand and he couldn't have been more right!  The food was great, the atmosphere relaxed and ample room for hammocks outside every room which all seemed to be quite clean!

Our first trip was to explore all the ruins, which is the main attraction of Indians to Hampi.  There used to be a huge civilization, kings and all...temples, bathhouses, markets and more temples, even giant elephant stables!
Vishnu (I think) withthe head of a lion:



















Lotus building:















Underwater Shiva temple...right out of the legend of Zelda!

We saw more than enough of it in the heat and headed back across the river and home.  Home also had a wood burning oven where they made delicious pizzas!  I should have told them about bagels too!

(Hey Lumer how am I doing with shpeleeng??)

Seeing a sunset on the rocks was another fun adventure, and a beautiful moment.  We also headed to a giant resevoir blocked by a huge dam... this was fun but what a shvitz we had!  Days started in Hampi with early morning yoga followed by a rest, food and another rest,  then time to do something... By this time it was toohot and this led to great difficulty in peeling the hammocks off ourselves, creaming u and heading into the sun...It actually felt like heading into the sun.  Talking to my dad who asked the temperature I said it was somewhere just over 30C.  Then I found out it is closer to 40 than 30!  That explained a lot!
So to go to the reservoir we decided to rent bikes, not the ones with motors!  Sarah and I were both a little unsure about safely returning to the starting point in one piece on a motorized vehicle...

So in above 30 temp we headed out for a 40 minute ride uphill, except for one drop towards a river that we had to bike up the other side!  What a trip!  And when the dam was insight there was one final uphill challenge to get to it!  At this point we found some shade beside a building and lay down for over an hour!  After much focus we mustered the willpower to get up and head towards a spot where we could hop in the water...  The area was full of boulders and flooded so you need to find one protruding from the water at a shallow enough angle to climb back out.  One of us made it in and the other was a bit of a princess, and since I left my tiara at home I was the lucky one to go swimming!  (This moment actually helped inspire my next destination...the ocean!)

Heading back was easier as it was all downhill minus the climb up the river bank, only a couple hundred meters of difficulty.  If you ask me what I did that night I would tell yo I have no recollection, but I bet the sleep was real good!

The main focus in Hampi for westerners is rock climbing, or more specific here, bouldering, something I wanted to but never got around to doing.  In the morning yoga always won out and in the afternoon I was too tired to learn a new sport...  so that is still on the to do list...

The last thing we had to do was see a sunset at the Hanuman temple... he is a monkey god and of course after climbing 600 steps to the temple it was covered in monkeys!  The temple was small but beautiful and the view was the best I had seen in Hampi...  I was trying to decide where to go next, to some caves north of Mumbai or first to the beach... I am typing now 200 meters from the ocean...it wasn't really a choice!