Off the beaten muddy track in Badami

Trip Start Mar 03, 2008

Trip End Mar 31, 2008

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Where I stayed

Mookambika Deluxe

(Badami hotels)

Flag of India Badami, India
Sunday, March 23, 2008

I said a sad farewell to Hampi as it really was one of the highlights of my trip with scenery which ranks in my top 20 in the world. My original plan had been to leave the next day with a driver who had quoted a good price and I was trying to avoid taking yet more buses but he changed his price dramatically at the last minute - one of the miscommunications that happens so often. I held back from wishing him ten daughters and that they all marry well (with big dowries!) - a good Indian curse and just packed my bag and took a tuk tuk to Hospet. It was chucking it down still with rain and the rickshaw wallah stopped to let a lady standing on the roadside into the rickshaw without asking me if this was ok and then she hopped off about 15 mins later without a by your leave! At the bus station, buses pulled in and out of the cratered forecourt splashing us all as they went through puddles and I found the bus to Baglekot or somewhere which was a two hour journey and then changed to one going to Badami, two more hours. I'm so sick of buses, the noise of the engine and the pollution and the potholes and the sweaty plastic seats and the grimy windows

Durga temple at Aihole

. Next trip to India is going to be all on the train, I've decided!!!

Arriving in scruffy little town of Badami, this used to be the capital of the Chalukya empire between the 4th and 8th centuries. Away from the more sanitised set up in Hampi, I was confronted in Badami by putrid smelling, congested streets teeming with people spitting, burping, idling around, selling flowers, watermelon and all sorts of wares, cows, lots of wild hairy pigs/boars, goats and a lot of scary looking monkeys. The rain had filled the troughs that ran the length of the non-existent pavement with water and women were washing clothes and pots in them. I'm never quite sure if these are used as gutters, sewerage or just water sources.

After clearing out an ant infestestion in my rather bleak, dingy room in Mookambika Deluxe (nothing deluxe about this business hotel!), I hid away watching HBO on the little TV until the power went out (again!) and then I snook next door to the only restaurant (or so it seemed) in town for a rather unpleasant curry under the watchful gaze of several Indian families.

The next day, I got on the most clapped out bus I have ever been on to go two hours down the road to a tiny village called Aihole

Temple detail

. Finally I saw two American guys, the only other Westerners in town, who were doing the same as me but going to another temple complex first. Getting off at Aihole, I found a collection of small temples with some fairly uninteresting sculptures although to be fair my guidebook did say that this was one of the 'experimental sites for much of early Hindu Dravidian architecture'. I did however start to wonder what the hell I was doing in this place. Wandering around the little village, I was accosted by about 30 barefoot kids all shouting 'hello school pen' and 'hello rupee'. This is the sum total of their English although a few of the older children managed 'your country'. This week, I'm telling everyone I'm from Antarctica and it's going down well. Last week I chose Mongolia and I think I got asked about 200 times in total. It's more fun and the people nod knowingly repeating it back to themselves. I figure I'm helping widen their geographic knowledge beyond England, USA and Australia!

I was a little anxious about how I was going to get back as the bus conductor had given me a time for the return bus but without conviction as I don't think he understood me. Then a guy in the simple side of the road dhabba (like a worker's caffe but outside and the cooking is done on the floor) had given me another time. In the end it turned out that the bus wasn't for another 4 hours

Aihole

! With the sun beating down, I sat there contemplating my non-existent options! Then a boy came over, he obviously went to a private school as he had a few more sentences than the other kids, he suggested I take a tempo (which is a large rickshaw designed for several people to share although they tend to squash 20 or so in) all to myself to my next stop for 150 rps. No-one would ever spend that about of money to have a rickshaw all to themselves in a village like this, so when I agreed and he led me over to a driver, a whole load of other people tried to board. I tried to indicate that I wasn't going to pay 150 rps to be squashed in with a load of other people who would effectively pay a couple of rupees each for the same journey and I selfishly shooed them away! The 40 minute bone-jarring drive took me past women washing clothes or carrying firewood on their heads, herds of goats and children walking barefoot to school for the second sitting.

At Pattadakal, I couldn't see the Americans so figured they must have got a rickshaw over to Aihole on discovering like me that the bus information they'd also been given was incorrect. There was a bus of German tourists being ushered in as I paid the non-Indian entrance fee - 250 rps instead of 5 rps which is what Indian's pay and we have to fill in our name, country and even our age - when I refused to put in my age, the gate man got very upset like I was breaking some rule so I put in 110 and that seemed to satisfy him

Breakfast stop for puris

! The group of temples at Pattadakal is a World Heritage Site and these were somewhat more impressive than those at Aihole with intricate carvings showing episoddes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The dark clouds that had been gathering during the morning started releasing yet more rain and I tried to find out from the security guards how I could get back to Badami, which was a fairly futile conversation as they just repeated everything I said back to me! I saw a large jeep (kind of twice the size of a normal jeep) waiting by the roadside and asked the people waiting inside if they were going to Badami. They were, so I got a seat inside and then as we set off constantly beeping along the whole of the 20km route, we picked up more and more people and children and live chickens until we were squashed in like sardines (well more than sardines if that's possible). I counted about 40 people in this small vehicle, most of them were crouching on the floor or bent over double (and they are short) to stand in the jeep. It was hot, bumpy and smelly for that hour back to Badami and I have huge admiration for these people who endure journeys like that everyday clinging onto their babies and children. I felt a little guilty that my backside had taken up the space equivalent two slender Indian women!

I spent another afternoon sitting in my room with no electricity listening to the heavy rain and thunderstorm

Pattadakal

. When I ventured out around 7pm, I met up with the American guys again. They were very camp and left it to me to go out into the rain to hail a rickshaw to take us to the supposedly upmarket hotel 2km out of town. The hotel was bright, warm and clean which was the main thing but then we discovered that the restaurant which had been lauded as excellent in the Lonely Planet was only doing a buffet (for the German coach party), so we had no option but to have that and it was, as we all agreed, the most disgusting expensive meal we'd had all trip. The curry has so tasteless and uninspiring. All in all Badami was not turning out to be a great choice in my itinerary!

Luckily the rain had stopped by the morning and I made my way through narrow laneways with old houses with brightly painted carved wooden doorways leading to dingy single rooms housing big families. Accompanied by loads of curious children, I picked my way down the precipice of what had been the main road to the famous architectural monuments until a digger had left a deep trench all the way along and hadn't been back for what looked like months to fill it in! Badami's highlight is its cave temples from around the 6th century. There are four of them dedicated to Shiva and Vishnu and the last one dedicated to Jainism. The caves overlook a large Tank where villagers were bathing and doing their washing and various waterside temples and ruins built into the hills opposite. The views were pretty good but I'd had enough of Badami and after climbing up to see the temples cut out of the rocks, I went back to get my bag and then took two more buses for 3 hours to Bijapur.