We needed to break up the beach time and get a bit of culture so we hopped on the train 7 hours (ish) inland to Hampi. We seem to have a good routine when we get on long journeys now - James generally gets on the top bunk and falls asleep and I somehow manage to pass the time! However at one point in the journey, we both ended up on the top bunk after my seat got taken over by a very large family!...it was cosy to say the least. Then a guy and his old dad got kicked off the train for not having the right ticket, and James kindly requested that I go and sit in their freshly vacated seats…gladly - at least that I could sit up properly!!

Everyone we spoke to said it was amazing, but their advice was to stay on the 'other' side of the river where they have meat and beer…a good enough reason for us! We managed to find a nice little hut on the 'other side' for fairly cheap, it was clean and quiet, what more could we ask for!? We'd decided to spend a few nights where we were, but then move across the river for a few nights, especially as our train back to Goa was super early (the little boats to take you across the river don't start too early and although there is a road to cross the river, it's quite a while away and adds on a lot to the journey).

The river crossing in Hampi is interesting; they have 2 companies running shuttles across the river for about 10 rupees (10p) a trip, 20 if you have luggage. However, each company is only responsible for one direction (bringing North to South, or South to North), so once the boat has done it's trip, it will return back to its originating bank of the river…empty. Even though there are loads of people waiting to cross! Doesn't seem very economical, but the system seems to work.

After our previous moped experience, we opted to play it safe and hire some push bikes for a day. Tip for you, don't just hire bikes from the nearest place to you!. Ok, so most of the bikes we saw didn't have any gears, but they probably had much better brakes! Not to mention my bald tyres…It made for some interesting cycling, especially as my sandals have no grip on the bottom and the pedals hadn't got any either, so my feet kept slipping off. Meant that I had to keep getting off the bike and walk it up hills! Oh well, it was a nice bit of exercise and we got to see a few of the sites.

Hampi is a bizarre place, it's almost like someone had some leftover stones and didn't know where to put them, so just dumped them in one place and left them there. It reminded us of Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones scenery. Absolutely stunning though.

On our 3rd morning on the 'other side' we were told by the manager that we needed to pack up our stuff as the Government were going to come and knock down all the guest houses - huh, ok. It's amazing how little we are shocked by anything now. Apparently for the past 3 years, there has been an injunction stopping the government from knocking down all of the guest houses on the 'other side' (something that they did to the other, other side about 6 years ago). The injunction just ran out and they were going to start tearing down the guesthouses one by one. Why? Well, some were saying that it's because in Hospet (where the main train station is) there are loads of big hotels and restaurants that nobody is visiting (because it's not very nice there and it's quite a distance from Hampi itself. Others were saying that it was because the 'other side' does not fit in, everyone goes there to eat meat and drink alcohol, but Hampi is actually quite religious and so the government want to stamp it out. I can see truth in both stories to be honest. But anyway, we decided that it was probably a good idea to just get going sooner rather than later, so packed up and headed off to the other side - it's where we needed to be anyway for our train in a few days time. Again, we managed to find a guest house fairly quickly and bargained them down a few hundred rupees a night!

We spent the next few days wandering around the monuments and ruins, generally enjoying a bit of culture and the slightly cooler temperatures than Goa. We did everything that was in walking distance, which was pretty much most of what was on the map. But we knew that we'd never be able to see everything that Hampi had to offer though as there are something like 3,700 monuments and temples scattered around. We managed to pick up another dog friend as well one day, we called him Buddy and he joined us for about an hour of walking. Really cute little thing, shame we couldn't have sent him home!!

Glad we made the trip out there though, it was a nice break from the beach and actually meant we got out and did stuff rather than just vegging out!