16th - 19th Sept. Hampi

Rain showers: all the bloody time!
Bat poo: everywhere (in temples)
Autorickshaw drivers: loads
Hours on train: 19
Power cuts: 1
Early starts: 2

It was a lovely early start to the morning as we had to get up at the stupidly early time of 6am (not use to it anymore). Ema's husband took us to the station in his taxi (everyone is in business here) to catch our 7:30am train, for the 10 hour trip to Hampi. We're getting use to these long journeys, good job considering the 30 hour one we've got coming up! Urhh.

The first leg of the train journey was really exotic and picturesque as we climbed the tropical hills of central Goa (pics and video of this).
Vik - I even thought I saw a wild peacock in a clearing!
Unfortunately the scenery later resembled East Anglia, albeit a hot one with slightly different farming techniques (buffalo pulling handmade ploughs), local workers and crops, so not that similar then...huh.

Hospet (where we had to get off at to get to Hampi), was a bit of a culture shock (obviously poorer than it's neighbouring state of Goa), as we whizzed through the muddy streets trying to avoid chickens, pigs, goats, cows and people in our hired autorickshaw (video - when uploaded). Many of the houses were original mud huts with the palm leaves used to thatch the roofs.

Hampi's a very unusual place, that it is situated amongst a strange and sublime boulder strewn landscape that resonates with a magical air. Hampi itself was once the capital of one of the largest Hindu empires in Indian history, it's bizaars were centres to international commerce; they use to sell diamonds by the bucket loads, that's how rich!

It is necessary for all Western tourists to sign in at the local police station, as there seems to have been trouble in the past (if you venture alone in the ruins after dark). This is where we met a tourist guide who offered to explain the meanings behind the strange and wonderfully carved temples. (Many pictures of these when uploaded)

In the main temple (in the centre of Hampi) lives a lovely Elephant named Lakshmi (the temple Elephant), who gave us a blessing each by resting her trunk on our heads.

The tour guide also teaches tourist to cook 'authentic' Indian food, so for a laugh, and to have a noisy in a typical Indian house, we arranged to have a cookery lesson, which ended up at his sister's house.

Well, what can we say? Hygene, isn't top of the agenda when cooking, it seems. (See pictures when uploaded). It took a gruelling 3 hours to make, as he wouldn't let us do much, not that there was any space to do anything, and there was only one knife!
They seem to have strange rituals that don't seem logical, such as chopping the potatoes into small pieces then boiling them before peeling them. Which means you have to peel the skin off when they're scolding hot, outch!
When we came to actually eating the food we had 'made', it was so oily, it made us feel a bit quesy (well me anyway - vik), so we didn't really eat that much afterall. Although, it was a good experience and we're glad we did it, we are feeling lucky to be alive.

We had one last day to travel all around the city ruins, but it was extremely unfortunate that it was one of the wettest days (and coolest) we had experience in India. Although we could guarantee it to be quiet!
We dressed prepared by donning on our full wet weather gear, much to the amusement of the locals, and we felt like we were having a normal day trip in Wales, all that was missing was the flask of tea.

On hiring another 'ped, we scooted around the outskirts of Hampi looking for the royal centre (central part of the old city), which we found difficult as the roads were cut off from flooding. It was quite entertaining watching the 4x4 cars plucking up the courage to drive through, which most did after a bus ploughed it's way through (some good pictures - when uploaded).

One other great thing we saw was a real live Kingfisher! It was so bright and beautifully red and blue (just like on the bottles).

Anyway, the temples were great, and many were to be seen! One other thing about them was the smell of bat poo! Urh, the smell!!!! Can't describe how nauseating and breathtaking it is, kinda stopped you going into the dark parts of the temples. (Got many pictures of these, so we won't bore you with all the details.)

Well, our little expedition to Hampi came to an end, which was well worth the visit, and we got the train back to Goa (10 hours again!) at 6:30am!

We finally end this blog here in Margao, where we are spending the day before our long, long train journey up to Delhi tomorrow (Friday).

As we don't have access to a XP or new version of Microsoft, we can't upload the pictures until we get to Delhi, maybe? So take a look in a few days time.