Hampi
Trip Start
Oct 20, 2008
1
5
15
Trip End
Oct 20, 2009
Hampi,
Karnataka,
India
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
The bus took a further 14 hours and we arrived in Mapusa, Goa at 9am where we swatted away the army of braying taxi drivers. As we stood there on the corner considering our options an Indian man sped upto us on his moped with a look of pure excitement and said directly to me, "Are you searching for happiness? The Kingdom of Happiness is within you!" I politely told him i was already happy. "Aha! You already pray to the gods in the Kingdom of Happiness. Keep praying to the gods!" And with that he whizzed off again, beaming. Welcome to Goa.
After hardballing a taxi fare we arrived at Vagator Beach and after the place we wanted was full set about to find a room (and more importantly at tis stage) a shower. With a 14-hour train journey, 8 hours rushing about Bombay and a bumpy 14 hour bus the layer of grime was in danger of forming a crust. I remember on the bus at after the 4:30am stop smelling a ghastly pong exactly like 'wet dog' and saying to Fiona that i thought maybe one of the indian children in the opposite cabin had peed the bed. Sadly, no. As i went to the toilet waiting for a room that morning i smelt the same smell on me! My griping stomach had still not left me and the bacteria was now coming through my pores.
Anyway.....!?
Luck finally presented itself in the form of a series of newly constructed beach huts and saw our first view of the Arabian Sea through long leaning palm trees. After a thorough shower we scrambled down to the sandy beach and both fell asleep as the rhythmic whoosing and hissing of the waves sought to relax our weary heads. As was the case through the 4 days in Vagator we were rudely awoken by the start of a constant stream of hawkers selling massages, clothes, shades, books, drums, fruit, threading, pedicures in rotation all wanting a little chat but images like that of a man playing frisbee with himself for 2 hours with 2 frisbees and the surrounding paradise kept me amused. We hired a moped to scoot around the various beaches and coastal villages with me thinking i'm some sort of toytown James Dean in swimming shorts.
As i said since Udaipur i had been occasionally gripping griping pains in my stomach after eating and by the second day in Goa (after a particulaly delicious pizza) was running for the loo. My stomach grumbled and tumbled not giving a clear signal of whether it was hungry or angry and rooting us to the beach hut. However, with Dr Fiona giving me a clear diagnosis (bacteria from the chicken stuck in my Heptic Flexor - don't ask!?) and after advising i avoid certain foods i was backing up and running.......only for the doctor to fall ill the next day.
Not wanting to be outdone Fiona went one better and ran a high fever, aching bones and 'the trotskis' pushing her food round the plate for days. Fi would sit in the shade on the beach, her condition worsening as i bopped and hopped round the parasol trying in vain to avoid the fierce sun. We stayed in the beach hut for the next 2 nights as the sounds of the club down the road pumped out the wobbling basslines. All i could do was throw some shapes from our bed. At least it felt like we'd really got our money's worth having spent a lot of time in the hut staring at the fan thinking we were in some 'Nam jungle sick bay.
Similar to when a hero in a horror film suddenly realises half the town is not acting as it should it hit us that the beaches of N.Goa were overrun by Russians. With experiences in France ski-ing too i think the British holidaymaker has found a new nemesis to target their xenophobia upon. They make our beloved Germans look like affable swedes. At the risk of presenting a sweeping generalisation (a pet hate of mine) they appear brash and rude and with little or no experience of travelling to other countries they show no respect to their host country, their high and mighty attitutude at odds with Goa's laid back vibe. You have been warned.
Although we contemplated delaying the trip to Hampi due to Fiona being quite weak she insisted we move on and on 20th Nov we boarded another sleeper bus ready for another 12 hour ride. A drunk indian man boarded and in the first 3 hours caused an almighty fuss by first needing 3 men to push him up to the top bunk and then shouting about his passport & wallet being lost. This went on and on and on in ever decreasing drunk circles.
At 3am i woke up (as the bus had stopped and the buffetting had given way to a disturbing calm) and jokingly asked Fiona in my haze if we were still in India and who was shouting. She said it was the man about his passport. She looked puzzled too. I looked out of the window into the gloomy striplit streets beow. The street signs were in a completely differently language and then saw some shop signs saying Bangalore. What!? We were further from Hampi than we were in Goa! We had checked with the driver and bus agent before we left but started to think we were on the wrong bus. At 9am stopping in a town called Hubli the waking westerners on the bus blinked at their Lonely Planet maps confused that we were closer now to Goa than Hampi! I was greatly amused by a German man shouting "Where have we beenz all night?". The bus of nutters run by nutters were told it was a further hour to Hampi. Three and a half hours later we arrived, 17 hours from whence we had begun!
As the bus doors opened a pit of expectant faces and waving arms offering hotels and connecting rickshaws squirmed about. It was either like a camera-less paparazzi press clambering for a celebrity or a scene of The Living Dead. After a refreshing sleep i was ready for them and like a chainsaw-less hero roared into the crowd helping a "not in the mood" Fiona from screaming at them and moved her to the side. I spotted a guest house i recognised and hotfooted it out of the mayhem. At the hotel our driver discovered it was full and mortified, insisted we stay at his mother' homestay two minutes walk away. The room was clean and with the promise of hot showers we were sold. As Fi laid down for a while i ambled down into the town along the main vehicle-less Hampi Bazaar.
The backstreets leading off the main bazaar where we were staying were filled with smiling children playing games from a forgotten era of innocence. Girls danced through games of hopscotch as the boys (which I only thought happened in Hovis adverts) whipped old rubber tyres with sticks down the bumpy track. There was a real sense of community in this small jovial town where you could wander the streets at any time and only come across a friendly hello or the usual questions of where you are from and your marital status.
The next day, with Fiona having a "little and often" attitude to food to build her strength back up after the illness, we wandered around the main temple. Up the flat granite slopes to the right of the main temple I dragged a trudging wife around the surrounding, almost lunar landscape. Amongst the countless, teetering 9th Century Jain temples and as far as the eye could see into the distance lay enormous granite boulders seemingly frozen in time, prevented from tumbling down the slopes by a unseen pause button. Looking around the horizon it resembled no environment I had come across. It was like being in Bedrock on the set of The Flintstones with gravity defying stones having been piled on top of each other by some giant baby with building bricks. Boulders, some the size of terraced houses, were propped up or balanced at impossible angles by small ones. Fiona's pictures on Flickr probably do them more justice than mine.
With Fiona fighting fit the next day we caught an early coracle (small boat across the river) to "the other side" where we had heard that you could buy beer and swear. With the intention of first hiring some bikes for the day we paced past the various dens of debauchery and settled on a couple of single gear, eyebrow-handlebarred bikes from the 1930's and creaked down the road to nowhere in particular. The surrounding oversized boulders dominated the horizon as we cycled through irrigated banana palms and paddy fields. On our travels we cycled into a village which was also a dead end but ended up throwing stones at the lofty coconut palms with the local kids to bag ourselves some fruit. We saw a sign pointing towards some cave paintings and took a diversion off the road. The road eventually plateaued out opening out fields of rice and bananas. Workers shouted the usual hellos from the fields eager for a response. Further along an old man standing in a field managed to communicate that the cave painting were behind the fields over some boulders. With blind faith we parked and locked our bikes and followed. An even older man in thick NHS specs was further along the track and walked with us. With puzzled looks to Fi and requests for confirmation we pushed on wondering whether we were offering ourselves up for kidnap. A clearing! We were ushered up some rocks and shown three sets of ancient paintings and a great view of the valley.
Despite the cloudy start the sun flared down on our perspiring limbs turning then a scorched pink and having to cycle back the last 5km for lunch with a puncture was not helping.
vagator beach, goa
We rode with a couple of kids for a while - Fi challenging them to a race. They wanted to help fix the puncture but their village was back the other way. Instead they showed me the best way to ride it with a puncture and with no sense of self consciousness whatsoever I sat back on the seat above the back wheel and pedaled like a flid back to base.After beers in the afternoon we took the last coracle back across, the dropping sun cutting a rippling dazzle over the water. That night after an epic haggling battle with a 13-year old over 2 t-shirts & some pants and an unbelievable cashew nut curry from a restaurant stepped into the banks of the river we finally got to look at some stars together making promises to Fiona to buy her some jewellery.
Our 5am start to leave the fantastic Hampi (Wed 26 Nov) signalled the start of another 8 hours train journey to the South of Goa and Pallolem Beach. This (mercifully) shorter blog is under a separate entry to break up the text a bit. Didn't mean it to be this long!
.....photos to follow....although Fi are much better on Flickr.....
