We took a train from Mysore to Bengaluru, and then transferred to go to Hospet on the sleeper train. We arrived in Hospet at 7:00 in the morning and took a rickshaw (10kms) from there to Hampi. It was the capital city for the Vijayanagar Empire from 1336 to 1565; at its peak it had over 500,000 inhabitants and ruled over much of southern India. The ruins are set in a dramatic landscape of rolling hills covered in precariously placed boulders and it's an incredible feeling when you crest the top of a boulder strewn hill to find another moss covered temple in a palm grove straight out of the Jungle Book. It really is a magical place. Hampi is split into two main areas, The Sacred Centre and The Royal Centre. The Sacred Centre is hillier with more boulders and the Royal Centre is flatter with less boulders (I guess that's a bit of a redundant sentence, never mind). In Hampi Bazaar, the main village, there are people living in the ruins, although archeologists want them to move out. When you look at it though, these ruins are no older than many of the houses that people inhabit in Europe. Because of the style of architecture the ruins look far older than they are. They are all supported by many pillars and are very square or rectangular in shape, there are no arches or tall buildings and they are all very simple to understand. The impressive things about Hampi were the ornate Hindu carvings, the sheer size of the stone blocks and the number of ruins. The city must have been huge at its peak.
The restaurants here are not great, but they work, the other day after supper I was still hungry so I bought something from a street vendor that appeared to be a deep fried potato. It was so disgusting that even the starving Indian-all in one stray dog I gave it to turned its nose up at it.
On our last day in Hampi we crossed the river to the side that our rickshaw driver said was full of Russians and Israelis doing bhang and charas (Indian drugs) - he said that because he receives more commission on the other side. We rented bicycles and biked through the rice and banana plantations to the base of a large hill, at the top of which is a Hindu temple which is said to be the birthplace of Hanuman (the monkey god). It was a 600 step climb with demanding monkeys all the way up. At the top, there were amazing views and I fed bananas to the monkeys.
That evening we got on a sleeper bus to Gokarna, unfortunately the “sleeper” part was not to be, even though it was a bus with beds in it. First of all we did not stop for supper until 11:00 pm and second of all even though we were told that we would be dropped off in Gokarna at 5:00 AM. We were instead dropped off at 2:00 AM in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere to wait for another bus that would take us the rest of the way there. At 2:30 a 20 year old 12 seater mini-bus pulled in and all 18 of us got in and were told we would have to pay an extra 50 rupees. We were taken to a bus station which we later learned was Gokarna but everyone else was getting off at Om Beach, 4 km away, so we decided that since we did not know how far from town the bus station was we should not get off all alone at 3:30 in the morning. We got off at Om Beach with everyone else and slept on the beach until the sun came up. At 7:00 AM we started walking the 4 kms towards Gokarna. Halfway we stopped at Kudle Beach for breakfast. Since it was so hot and we did not sleep last night we decided to stay there for the night. We found a beach hut made from palm leaves behind a restaurant that alternates between playing Trance music and Bob Marley, that is, when it's not being drowned out by the group of guys who sit around and play the same rhythm on their bongo drums all day long. Not that I'm complaining.
The restaurants here are not great, but they work, the other day after supper I was still hungry so I bought something from a street vendor that appeared to be a deep fried potato. It was so disgusting that even the starving Indian-all in one stray dog I gave it to turned its nose up at it.
On our last day in Hampi we crossed the river to the side that our rickshaw driver said was full of Russians and Israelis doing bhang and charas (Indian drugs) - he said that because he receives more commission on the other side. We rented bicycles and biked through the rice and banana plantations to the base of a large hill, at the top of which is a Hindu temple which is said to be the birthplace of Hanuman (the monkey god). It was a 600 step climb with demanding monkeys all the way up. At the top, there were amazing views and I fed bananas to the monkeys.
That evening we got on a sleeper bus to Gokarna, unfortunately the “sleeper” part was not to be, even though it was a bus with beds in it. First of all we did not stop for supper until 11:00 pm and second of all even though we were told that we would be dropped off in Gokarna at 5:00 AM. We were instead dropped off at 2:00 AM in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere to wait for another bus that would take us the rest of the way there. At 2:30 a 20 year old 12 seater mini-bus pulled in and all 18 of us got in and were told we would have to pay an extra 50 rupees. We were taken to a bus station which we later learned was Gokarna but everyone else was getting off at Om Beach, 4 km away, so we decided that since we did not know how far from town the bus station was we should not get off all alone at 3:30 in the morning. We got off at Om Beach with everyone else and slept on the beach until the sun came up. At 7:00 AM we started walking the 4 kms towards Gokarna. Halfway we stopped at Kudle Beach for breakfast. Since it was so hot and we did not sleep last night we decided to stay there for the night. We found a beach hut made from palm leaves behind a restaurant that alternates between playing Trance music and Bob Marley, that is, when it's not being drowned out by the group of guys who sit around and play the same rhythm on their bongo drums all day long. Not that I'm complaining.
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