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Hitchhiking being so easy, fast and free of charge in India we decided to continue this way, but this time for longer distance: 140 km to Mysore.
Thumbs up in Kalpetta's main street and 3 minutes later we were seated on a big truck with two guys. 6 hours later we were approaching Mysore when the they stopped the truck for dinner. Despite they were not speaking any English, we understood that this time they were waiting for something from us...money of course. We had to explain them that money is usually not part of an hitchhiking deal, but of course they didn't care about, so we simply unloaded our packs and started walking on the dark and dusty road. We jumped on a local bus and finally reached Mysore around 9pm. For the first time, I entered a real Indian city, with its very dense traffic, noise, pollution, rubbish everywhere, and so on. We found a bed an went for dinner.
As I feared, by moving north prices moves up, and Mysore being pretty touristic we had to deal with prices two times higher than what we were used to.
Next day we wanted to visit Mysore palace, one the most popular tourist spots in India after Taj Mahal. Entry fee has to be paid at the main entrance, and allows to visit the inside of temple. By talking to the security guard (and joking by telling him we were Swiss bankers having an appointment with the Maharajah to talk about one of his banks accounts!!) we found that entering the temple's garden was totally free, and gardens were more than enough for us! Funniest thing were Indian tourists walking around and asking us too take pictures with them. Felt like being Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp on holiday. At some point we started asking 10 rupees for taking pictures with us! We spent the rest of the day walking in the crowded bazaar and visiting the railway museum which turned to be our waiting area before catching a night train to Hampi. Train journey took 13 hours and we were seated in what Indians call Sleeper class, which means each passenger is supposed to have a small bed. Being the cheapest option, windows and doors are kept open all night long. Right after boarding, we took our seats (almost our seats actually) and prepared for the long night. Minutes before train departure, a drunken man jumped on board, and slid below our seats to hide from ticket inspector.
We were able to spend a pretty good night, despite temperature which is starting to drop around 15°C during the night.
We reached Hampi early in the morning, and found the usual accommodation and motorbike. For the first time since I arrived in India I found a real touristic places, with the disturbing climate that goes with: restaurants waiters standing on the street trying to pull you in their business, tour operators selling everything, nearly nonexistent Indian culture and way of life but some ridiculous old men dressed like nobody no longer dresses in India in 2013 and asking money for a picture with them (this time for real).
Disregarding all those aspects of mass-tourism I must say Hampi, and its surroundings, are really spectacular: endless temple ruins in the desert, mountains of round shaped huge stones, and very peaceful Hindu temples full of very friendly monkeys and less friendly local people, probably not being that happy to see tons of tourists overrunning their homes.
By walking around, were offered to buy all kind of drugs: Hampi being India's hippies and drugs capital. It became normal to cross people which were most probably in a total different world than ours, some really funny!
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