7/4/2011 Arrived in Bangalore at 6.30am but decided to go straight to Mysore. Queing for tickets, people are so rude, they literally have no system and everyone just pushes in. It is extremely annoying. People thread their money and tickets through the glass to the staff and when I tried to squeeze from the side like others, the woman sent me back! So I pushed back in as I had still been waiting a while, only for some old-ish man to start shouting. He probably h...

6/4/2011 Woke up to barter for a checkout time agreeing 50 yet again! I lost the coin toss so I had the unfortunate task to get a bus to Hospet, walk a couple of kilometres to the train station, buy the tickets walk back and then catch another bus back! Had lunch but not many places around the area served meat in their meals! So I had to go five without any! Never again! Chris and I then hit a stunning riverside bar called the Mango Tree Restaurant. Leant again...

5/4/2011 Rented a scooter for the day for about 2.50 each and explored many of Hampi's illustrious temples, ruins, rock faces, boulders, sculptures and breathtaking scenery. Chris drove us straight to the first big area of temples and ruins right in the centre of the town (town pretty much being a long road, riverside and bazaar) where we climbed around observing all of the ancient ruins. It looked like something out of Predator with all the banana and palm tr...

4/4/2011 Booked a bus for the night to Hampi to save on accommodation and couldn't haggle a price we wanted for scooters to drive around so ended up spending a long day walking from Gokarna to all the nearby beaches over a 16-kilometre radius. Bumped into French girl and spoke to some Germans before trekking over headlands, along sandstone at the top of hills, clambering over rocks, balancing on cliff-edges, rustling through palm trees and jungle and settling on...

3/4/2011 Didn't get home 'til some mental hour and woke up Chris so we could walk three kilometres to get some cash out! Was a hot and hanging walk where an ice-lolly salesman on his bicycle stopped for us to buy a couple of bargains. Caught a couple of buses to leave the state of Goa and to enter Karnataka via the beautiful countryside on some terribly bumpy roads and a pain-in-the-proverbial bus conductor whistling all the time to signal to the driver to leav...