Can We Just Stay in Hampi Forever?

The First of Many Sleeper Busses

 Hampi was, without doubt, one of the most beautiful and interesting places I have ever been. I will try to do it justice here, but it will be a challenge because it was just so breathtaking. We began our 10 day journey on a sleeper bus. Now, these busses run overnight and have actual beds, although rather uncomfortable and sketchy, are still better than being vertical and trying to sleep for twelve plus hours. Nothing is close to Bangalore and flights are too expensive. All of the train tickets are booked for the rest of the semester also, so that only left us with the bus option. We we began our journey on a sleeper bus that left from right down the road from out apartment. It was one of the most
uncomfortable rides ever, it is nearly impossible for me to sleep on a bus in general, regardless if I am sitting or laying down, so it was a relief when

Rented Motor Bikes

we finally reached Hampi (after about twelve hours on the bus). We got to Hospet, the nearest town that the bus ran to, and were swarmed by rickshaw drivers. We got one for a fair deal and headed to our hotel in Hampi. The place where we stayed was wonderful. It was called Padma Guest House and if anyone is traveling to Hampi I highly recommend staying here. It wasn't fans, but it is run by a family and they are just so nice they treat you as if you have lived there your whole life.

Just Hanging Out in Some Ancient Ruins

So we dropped off our stuff and were geared up for our adventures to start (I went with two of my roommates by the way, so it was just us three girls). We had decided to give motor bikes a try and then to take a rickshaw tour the next day to hit up anything we missed on our own (which turned out to be a lot). We got the bikes and after Hannah dumped herself and Melissa off, Melissa
 decided to ride with me. Hannah got the gist soon, though, and we headed to the police department to register with them. At first we thought that they were really nice, they asked to hear what little Kannada we knew (the local language in Bangalore) and we laughed about it for a bit, but then one of them started to get real creepy and would ask us if he came to Bangalore could he take us out to dinner and whatnot, and then he tried to call my phone so I could have his number, and it was just getting  really sketchy so we headed out as soon as we could. He continued to call me all day, but I ignored his calls; I'm really

The Ruins Were Amazing

hoping he doesn't make it to Bangalore cause that'd just be too too sketchy. Melissa and I zoomed away on our bike as soon we we got out of there, but Hannah crashed hers into the flower pot right outside the police station so she was stuck talking with the creeper for a while longer. We finally made it out of there though and started our sight seeing adventures.


There were temples everywhere you looked in Hampi; there was even one right outside our hotel. We basically just cruised around on the bikes, enjoying the fresh air and stopping wherever something looked interesting on the road side. We weren't too worried about seeing everything that day, because we were going to be taking a guided tour the next day. I'm sure we were a sight for sore eyes; everyone couldn't stop laughing at the little white girls on the motorcycles. They took even more pictures than they would

Hanging Out with Nandi

normally, which is annoying because people are always taking pictures of us here. Apparently in Hampi's  hay day there were over a half a million people living there, and there had to be at least that. The architecture and the pure manpower it must have taken to build thousands of stone monuments and temples is crazy to think about. There were tons of stone carvings of deities, also. Like Nandi, he was once just a huge boulder, but somehow people carved him with the simple tools that they had. It was just insane to think about all the history that a place like that had, and even when the temples we saw started to mesh together, they were still amazing to look at.


One of the first places we went, per my request, was to the Lakshmi temple. This is, of course, where the sacred elephant Lakshmi blessed people. It

was amazing, and too funny too. The elephant was trained (which was sad, but he is also a very important symbol to many people's religion), to take money offerings from the people standing in front of him, five it to his keeper off to the side, and then bless the person by putting his trunk on their head. For foreigners apparently it costs more because I tried to donate RS. 2 (which is like 4 cents) which is what Indian's pay, and there was no blessing, so I had to donate Rs. 10 (which is like 20 cents) and he did it. And then of course I blew like five dollars just so I could keep touching the elephant. Sorry not sorry.

The sights here were just breathtaking. There were multiple points where we were able to see all of Hampi from high up and that was incredible.

Overlooking Part of Hampi's Ancient Ruins

When we went on our Rickshaw tour we got to see way more than we bargained for. We thought that we had hit most of Hampi when we were on the bikes, because we spent a full day packed with sight seeing, but boy were we wrong. It was actually a really good deal, we each paid about $6 USD for an entire day and it was packed with new sights. Out of all the important stops we made on the tour we had actually only seen one the days before, so clearly we didn't go far enough or down the right roads, which makes sense cause a lot of the temples were dow dirt roads that didn't look important when we were driving around. We saw all sorts of neat places on the tour. We saw this one temple that had been completely buried over time and then dug up by archaeologists. It had a complex water system running through it and once it was excavated water actually started to run

Making Friends Everywhere We Go

through it again which is just so cool to me. We even found a crab there, and who knows how that happened! But anyways, so we saw many amazing things and once again, the fact that nothing in life comes free appears again. We wanted to just walk around on our own and admire the ruins, however, there are people who live in Hampi and make their living by showing people around the ruins. This makes sense, but it isn't really fair because you have nice older women in saris coming up to you and just start showing you around, and you feel obligated to follow them and listen to them, and then they ask for a tip in the end. It's so frustrating because I like to just wander around and ponder my myself, but these people need the money so they seek out the tourists and pretend to be doing them a favor but then ask for money in return. I am so conflicted. I always give in, too. They always get my money. We did meet some really nice people, though, who actually did only want to help us. Mostly Indian's who were visiting Hampi. We met this really nice family, or what I assumed was a family, it could have just been a brother and his three sisters, but who knows. Anyways, we met them when we were visiting Lakshmi the elephant. The brother approached us

Meditating with Ganesha

because we couldn't figure out how much to give the elephant in order for it to touch us. He took pity on us and helped us out, and even shared the crackers they bought to feed the elephant with us. The kids were cute and laughed at how excited I got that the elephant was taking food from my hand. I didn't even care because I was in heaven. They started to ask the typical questions like where we were from, what we were doing in India, blah blah blah. I have started to tell people I am from Canada, because with all the turmoil with the States and the East it seemed like a solid plan. Plus if you tell people you're form Canada they don't ask you a billion questions like they do if you say you're from the states. So I told this poor guy I was from Canada and he got all excited and started asking me all these questions and whatnot. He started speaking French too at some point I'm pretty sure and then asked me if I had any coins from there (which is another common question we get, apparently a lot of people collect coins from all over the world). I was trapped in my lie and I felt bad because this guy was actually so nice and not creepy at all. I stuck to it though and wiggled my way out of it. We kept bumping into them all day, though, and I did feel bad. LYING IS BAD

Driving the Rickshaw

PEOPLE. Remember that.


So our adventures continued. On our rickshaw tour our driver, Raj, would ask us questions about some history or a monument or something. This one rock had naturally been carved out by the weather and into the shape of a god, in some people's eyes. He asked us which god it looked like and I answered Ganesha, because he is my favorite and I figured it was a good guess, and I was right! my prize was getting to drive the rickshaw, which was a hoot! It was a manual, and I don't even know how to drive a manual car, let alone a manual rickshaw, so I just controlled the gas and the steering and he did the shifting. Teamwork at it's finest. We learned a lot from our guide, actually. We were kind of thrown with him at

Boat Ride with a Man Who Looked Like Jesus

first and we were a bit uneasy, but he was nice enough and knew a lot about the history.

And the adventures continued!!! So the next day we decided that we were going to explore across the river on our own. We didn't really have a game plan, and it showed. So we went to the riverbank and wanted to take the little round boats across the river; it was on our list of things to do before we left Hampi. So we get there and the guy was trying to charge us double what we should have been paying, but we finally got him down to a semi-reasonable price. We got in this little tiny circular boat that was half filled with water already and in comes this man who looks like Jesus and only has one leg. He clambered in the boat with us and our driver, or paddler I should say, pushed us off and hopped in. The boat just kept filling with water, but

View at the Top Near the Monkey Temple

luckily we didn't sink. I was also being splashed in the face the whole time which made my paranoia of getting a parasite even worse. We did go under this rock, though, which was cool. There was about a foot of space, so we all had to lay completely flat in the boat (getting soaked in the process) so we could pass under this rock. It was a lot of fun, even though I did get a bit seasick and convinced I now had a parasite.


Well we finally got to the other side and awkwardly clambered out and helped one-legged Jesus get out as well. We started to hike up to a temple that we could see but after looking around it for a while we realized that we really had no idea where we were supposed to be going. We started to hike a bit, but turned around, afraid that we would get even more lost. We saw a white person, but lost them through the trees, so we were alone again. We went down the hill behind the temple and crossed a part of the river because we saw people on the other side and were just praying that they spoke English. We ran into this one man who was actually laughing at us because we were so obviously lost. He spoke English and called us a Rickshaw, thank god. We clambered in and headed to the Monkey Temple. Now, this temple was at the top of a

Honing my Bargaining Skills

small mountain, and in order to reach it you had to climb up over 500 steps. So that was miserable, to say the least. As if I wasn't out of shape already, the altitude just about killed me. We made it to the top, though, and the view was stunning. There were monkeys everywhere too, which was entertaining. After spending an hour or two admiring the scenery, and having a delightful conversation with an italian man I met up there, we headed back down the mountain (much easier to go down than up), and onto the next temple, which we didn't stay long at, and then to do some shopping.


I have almost perfecting my bargaining skills, which I am so happy about. Once I get into the groove, there is no stopping me. This just feeds my already unhealthy shopping addiction. It is really

Hanging Out With Some Cobras

helpful if you tell them that you live in India, so you aren't just any old tourist and you actually know what you should be paying for the item. Usually they are reasonable, and become even more reasonable if you strike up a casual conversation with them about nay old thing. I have actually had some very nice conversations with people who were trying to sell me things. So yes, I got a fair amount of my gifts bought for all you lovelies back at home.


On our side of the river again, we ran into a snake charmer, which was also on our list of things to see and do in Hampi. So of course we stopped, knowing he was going to overcharge us for the show, but still, who could pass up that kind of show? He did put on quite a show but then asked us if we wanted to go any closer. Now, I'm not afraid of snakes, but when you are that close to one your instincts kick in and you can't help but be afraid. We got to hold the basket and pet the back of the cobra's hood, which was terrifying, but it was really neat, too. I had enough very quickly, though, my senses were in overdrive being that close to death, so I put down the basket promptly, paid the man and we headed off to shower off the day and relax on the

Henna

rooftop of our hotel overlooking the ruins. It's a hard knock life, no?


Our last day in Hampi was relaxing, we only had a half a day before we had to leave for our bus, so our original plan was to get up to watch the sun rise around 5am and then stay awake so we could sleep on the bus. Well, we got up to watch the sun rise, but then when we got back to our rom we all fell asleep until almost 10am, so that plan was an epic fail. Regardless, we got up, had our daily "pancake" (which was really like a crepe filled with banana slices, DELISH), and just lounged around for a couple hours. The hotel keeper's cousin, who was 12, came and talked to us for a while. He was so smart it was kind of scary, but adorable because of it. I told him all about college and how to apply for scholarships and he asked his mom if he could go and she said if he worked hard, then yes, he could. I am such a Team Mainer it is not even funny. So we still had a solid three hours to kill, so he asked us if we wanted henna. I said sure, why the hell not, and my roomies followed. We ended up right next to the hotel in his cousins house where she gave us beautiful henna designs. While we were there her mother started to make chapatis and there

Beautiful Paint Bases

were little cousins running around everywhere. It was nice to just be in a house, pretending like we fit in, for a couple hours.


All too soon, though, we had to head out to catch our bus in Hospet to Mumbai. We carpooled, or rickshawpooled I guess you could say, with a girl we met from Denmark who was on our bus as well. We met this really nice guy named Jack at the bus stop who was also headed to Mumbai. He was from Australia and looked, no joke, just like Allen from The Hangover. Hampi, though, without doubt, was one of the most amazing places I have ever been, and I've been to a lot of cool places. Just the history and the feeling you got when you were there was incredible. What I liked most, though, if that everyone was so nice, they treated you like you lived there and weren't just another tourist come to gawk at the temples. I was sad to see it go, and it will definitely be a place I would visit in the future if I am ever so lucky to come back to India, which I hope I will be. Anyways, that's the adventures in Hampi, Mumbai was our next stop in our whirlwind trip, more on that to come.

Today, my life is just Shelby.