Hampi.
the bus journey to hampi was interesting as it was our first proper bus trip in india. we took a taxi to some god forsaken middle of no where bus stop in Cancona for nine and waited patiantly for our bus. we met an english guy who said he had tried to get to Hampi yesterday, but had given up waiting at 12. the bus had eventually turned up at 3 in the morning. this filled us with a certain sense of apprehension. after calling the bloke who we bought the tickets off a few times and having our new english friend Olly, shout at him, we found out that the bus was “on its way”. a bus eventually turned up but when we showed our tickets we were told that it wasn’t our bus. our bus, as it happens, was on its way. there was a big crowd of disgruntled israelis waiting with us who were kicking up a fuss, as is their wont. the bus man was getting flustered and retreated back into the bus with a couple of people who had the apparent good fortune to own the correct kind of ticket. Olly wasn’t having any of it and tackled the busman when he emerged, stressing the fact that he had to wait for the bus the day before. the busman relented and he leapt aboard suggesting that i do the same unless i wanted to wait for another three years.
selecting a vapid grin, i sidled up to the busman and pretending that he hadn’t already checked and rejected my ticket only five minutes ago, i thrust it at him. he looked at the ticket then looked at his roster sheet. he nodded apparently satisfired by some obscure criteria i had passed. we were on. we evicted Olly from his bunk just as he was getting comfortable and sent him off to sleep next to a largish bloke of questionable hygene. the bunks were large enough for a slim person of short stature. having to share this small shelf with someone is pretty insane. i was hanging onto the lip of our bunk the entire way, the only thing stopping me from spilling out into the corridor when the driver, taking a speed bump to fast sent the bus skywards in bone shattering leaps, was a thin metal bar cunningly positioned near my face and shins. sleep was a fond memory that i mused on as we bounced our way to hampi. lucy seemed to sleep fine.
Hampi is a very picturesque place. the mountains of boulders look strikingly like small piles of pebbles. defying gravity in an eyepleasing manner. clambering up the mountains was good fun and i did a spot of light rock climbing as well. not strictly allowed we found out later. not much, apart from being dociley herded around temples, was allowed because a tourist had something stolen once about five years ago and this was still big news. we had to go the police staion to regester our presence and we were shown a picture of the dreaded criminal and were told that he was still at large and hiding in all the cool and interesting places so we simply musn’t go there. by ignoring this drivel we had ourselves a pretty good time.it was really nice to just stroll around and chill out in the shade of an ancient ruined temple. we also took some bikes out and saw even more temples, most undergoing reconstruction, presumably with original escavated stone. lucy got bored of this edylic lifestyle fairly quickly so we booked a ticket to mysore.
it was only after we had bought our ticket that we met a bunch of australians we had befriended in palolam, who told us of the absolute epicness of Hampi across the river. far more relaxed atmosphere and a lush lake to go swimming in. blast!
the less said about the train journey the better. i will say that it involved getting up crazy early, changing trains, lots of frantic running around and panicking and the loss of a ticket. naming no names but it was lucy.
Mysore, after Hampi was a bit of a disapointment. apart from the eformentioned hill, there was really not much to do apart from drink in the choking trafic pollution. we visited the famous maharaja’s palace. it was an eceptuanal peice of vulgarity. a farely large building, with crenelatioins and pointy onion bits on the top. what sets it apart from most buildings is that every surface had been coated in tacky lightbulbs.
presumably this is meant to be pleasing on the eye at night, but during the day it was hidious.
not so much gilding the lily but gilding something which should never have been brought anyones attention in the first place. and not so much gilded but galvanised rather cheaply.
possibly im going over the top here, but i had had a bad day and it offended me.
anyway after all this fun we decided to go to Bangolore.
our arrival in Bangalore as chance would have it, coincided with a massive international engineering/mechanical/political expo which happens only once every five million years and only when all the planets are aligned according to nostradamus’ pamphlet entitled when not to go to bangalore. this meant that we spent the first three hours or so trying to find anyone who would put us up for the night.
emotions ranged from amusment to mild irritation to disbalief as we called everyone in the book, visited countless hotels, even ones beyond our budget by miles. by the end i was nursing a deep hatred of the place that had gone beyond the rational.
we decided to go back to the station and get the next train out, no matter where it was going. we were even prepared to go back to Mysore. (shudder) our taxi driver though had taken it on as some sort of personal challange to find us a room. eventually we ended up down a dank and fetid side street, forking out an idiotic amount of money for the worst room i have ever had the misfortune of spending the night in. desperation had us in its grip however and my glazed mind bairly noticed.
after five minutes in our fully payed for room, we began to notice however. lucy noticed that the bed smelt as though it had already been slept on by ten sweating men with unquestionable dicey hygene. also there was no shower. this may account for the smell of unwashed bodies on the bed. the smell of sewage that permeated the air i attributed to the heavily stained sink, which cleary had at some point been used as a latrine.
we had to get out. nothing was in walking distance so we took a taxi to the city center to find somewhere nice to eat. we didn’t, so we had a mcdonalds. i felt a cold darknes nibbling at my soul as we made our way back to our palatial residence.
at some point we stopped at a traffic jam and i watched in detached interest as womans face appeared out of the side of a autorickshaw and vomited with wild abandon onto the tarmac. with the attitude of a natural philosopher disecting a new specimin, i evaluated the size and consistancy of the chunks that flew out of her mouth with such velocity. she didn’t appear to be enjoying herself.
i regarded the spectacle with a bleak eye. i wasn’t suprised. it struck me that Bangalore was just the sort of place that it is almost impossible to ride in a taxi through without being violently sick.
very little to do in Bangalore apart from try to get out. to do anything you must first drive through about an hour of choking trafic fumes and after you have done whatever you wanted to do, you have to drive back. the unscrupulus taxi driver then atempts to swindle you. rather trying.
we went shopping and saw two movies. Blood Diamond was pretty good. we couldn’t sleep in our awfull room on acount of hords of indian business men, here for the expo, shouting at each other in the corridoor outside our room untill the small hours. this lack of sleep coupled with the squalid conditions contributed to it being the worst room ever. so we left. all trains to Goa and Hampi (our fist choice of destination) were booked upfor the next week, but we managed to get a couple of seats to Mumbai. a paltry 24hours. pah! i could do it in my sleep! we had been mulling over the idea of heading to south east asia early for a while now, and this proved to be the catalyst. as soon as we get to mMmbai we will change our flights accordingly
arrived in Mumbai. now my fourth visit…
can’t say i missed it, but its quite nice all the same.
so this is to be the last post from india. we went to the Taj hotel which housed the singapore airlines office, and got our tickets changed to tomorrow. the we felt out of place strolling through the glittering Taj, being peered at by besuited chaps who where no doupt wondering who let the the riff raff in.
no pictures im afraid, this place has no usb slot and i only managed to extract this blog through a bizzare form of osmosis.
i will blog a final summery of India as a whole when i have thought of one.
love julio
