Hi ! Right, we've left Goa. Caught a train from Margao which cost only 80Rs each (about 1pound) for a 400km train trip. Buying the tickets was an experience - I see why people like to queue up the day before and wait in an orderly line for hours before they are guaranteed to get their ticket. On the day of departure you can still buy your ticket at the station but you enter a mosh pit of frenzied elbowing and shoving... I am ashamed to say I resorted to Queue hopping - managed to race past most of the crowd before they realised a new ticket booth had just opened! Got our tickets and back to the right platform with minutes to spare. Fortunately our train was a little late. Another mob descended on the unreserved carriage in second class - which we had tickets for. Somehow we managed to get a seat for the three of us together. The seats on our carrage were really wooden planks but much better than standing for nine hours like some unlucky ones had to. The Train pulled off smoothly and we had a constant stream of guys bringing refreshments, yelling Chai! Chai!, Coppee Coppee or the like. Had breakfast of iddly wada in a banana leaf bowl. Iddly is soft rich rice cakes with 2 sauces (one brown one white - both spicy) and a savory doughnut, v tasty! I couldn't find the bin on the train after finishing breakfast, asked the guy sitting opposite who kindly said he would take care of it. I gave him all the rubbish in a bag and he launched them out the window! We arrived at Hospet in Central Karnataka about nine hours later with numb bums. We caught a local auto rickshaw the next morning to Hampi. Three of us with our backpacks in the tiny rickshaw was a bit of a squeeze and it struggled on the hills but we made it! Hampi is a small village now, dwarfed by the number and scale of ancient ruins for miles around on a boulder strewn landscape. Once the capital of one of the largest Hindu empires in indian history, was founded in 1336 and destroyed in 1565 Deccan Sultanates. We check three hotels before deciding on the last "Sudha Guest House". It had clean rooms and was run by a friendly family, it cost only 100Rs/night too. The Next day we hired the same rickshaw (Manny) and a local guide for the day (that was 5 in a rickshaw)! Our Guide Hanuman, who looked a bit like the monkey god he was named after, overcame his vocabulary limitations using creativity the English language has not seen since Shakespeare and made the ruins come alive with the stories of what the buildings would have been used for and by whom. We saw elephant stables, princesses baths, palaces, dancing halls and about a million temples. We finished the day watching the sun set over the ruins from a hilltop near the village. A great day in all. We tried to get a few beers that night but the only place to get them was the same price as our room for the night per bottle, so we stuck to tea and played cards. The next day, Nikki had disagreement with the curry from the night before. So poor Nik stayed close to the Sudha Guest House whilst Lisa and I explored the main Temple in the Village. The temple was mainly dedicated to Virupaksha a form of Shiva. Inside the temple was a courtyard with a huge elephant called Lakshmi. She was a particularly gorgeous elephant who blesses visitors. The priest looking after the Elephant said I should give a donation to receive a blessing so took out 10 Rs, Lakshmi grabbed it then handed it over to the Priests donation bowl. She puckered up then grabbed my head and pulled me in for a smooch blessing! After the encounter with the elephant we climbed one of the smaller towers to gain a view over the rest of the village and temple. The Tower was pitch black inside after the first floor, and the narrow stone stair case was caked in a thick layer of crunchy dirt we couldn’t see. After switching on my trusty torch which I wish I hadn’t, as pointing up I saw a heap of bats swooping down the passage, I’m not scared of bats you understand, I just realised what I was standing in! After a quick view at the top we scurried back to wash our feet. Later that day we said goodbye to Hampi and our friendly rickshaw guy took us back to Hospet to catch a sleeper train to Bangalore that night...