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Published: March 26th 2007
Glorious Hampi!
Our first night in Hampi watching the sunset on one of the many set of boulders why helluuuu there! alice here, long time no speaketh!
so i think tarzan left off with little tales of our first moments in Ooty. we had much more fun when our buddies Lenka Lisa and Hester joined us from Bangalore. i can't recall so much what happened on what day so i'll just blab a bit and hopefuly you'll get an idea!
Lisa Steve Tara and I went out to a bar on the night of their arrival and met some cool dudes who boogied at a club nearby so we checked that out. that was all quite fun and it looked as though we had just stepped onto the set of save the last dance with us white chicks boogying with the hip hop dudes. anyway, we also went there the next night and partayed a bit and it all went speedingly in a blur of shimmying and shaking booties. enough about the partying...
So one day we met a lovey lady at the train station who invited us to her sister's pad the following day, of what i will delve into more details for you in a second. so that day we got a train to coonor to
Some temple thing near us
You could see this temple from our lodge. This is where the elephant,Lakshmi was kept. Don't the temples look like pyramids? go on a trek and see some view points. and my were there some views! it was like the lake district meets the sound of music, all greenery and pretty skies and low hanging clouds. the pictures will show you so much more than i can say in this dribble, but even they can't show the splendor of the indian hill stations. we tried a few attempts at hitch hiking which failed miserably but thank the lord that temperatures are of the english kind in Ooty so we didn't get too hot hiking up the roadsides. we eventually jumped onto a bus, though, whch turned out to be a tour bus for some indian lads and we got to try tea and stopped at all of the right points with our own guide so that was all fine and breezy. and then we went back and ate and went to the club so was all pretty normal for a day of travelling in india. a funny moment was thrown upon us when tara was mugged by a monkey. haraharaharhar! my we did roll around laughing and then even laughed a little more! it just jumped out of the bushes and
Tungabhadra River
This is where all the locals bathed and where we went for a spot of swimming too! gave a pathetic 'grrr' and tara went 'aaaaarrrghhh' and threw down her bag of munchies and apple juice and ran away! well the monkey was extremely happy as you can imagine but tara was most annoyed at losing her apple juice, and has had a quivering angst shaking her body from being around monkeys ever since.
so, as i mentioned, that lovely lady whom we met at the train station invited us to her sister's tree plantation the following day. ooo and we did have a jolly good time! we got the bus there which tired us a little but then a dude called Harry came and collected us from the bus stop and took us to the house. it was very pretty and reminded me of the cottage i used to stay in when i was younger! there's a lot of british influence in Ooty and you could definately see where the british owners has made their mark on this house. very spanking indeed. so we chatted and picked tea and drank tea and went to a tea factory and saw some waterfalls and bought some tea and then got a bus home and ate and went out again!
I apologise for the shortness of these daily descriptions but i have to much to tell thee and not enough time, so the pictures will explain it all!
it was very sad to be leaving our buddies but we did see Lisa and Hester again the next day in Bangalore before our train to Hampi. Lenka, though, we miss you and hope you are still well and that you will get your nose pierced!!!it was great to have a day in Bangalore again and we tried to take advantage of the bars and shops, which i think we succeeded in! I even got another hoop in my ear, which is multicoloured and groovey, to celebrate. im tempted to get more when i got back but i think im going overboard with the piercings as now have 3 studs and 2 hoops in my head! but do want more as the guy is very nice and painless, and its like 80p!!woowoo.! dont worry though, guys, all you need to do is rub coconut oil onto the piercings and its all fine and dandy, i will definately keep buying that stuff once im home! oh, and by the way, tara got her
nose pierced a couple of weeks ago, i dont think she told you! we'll try to get pics up if we can. added comment: i now have a black nose stud as my other fell out and i canny get it back in! and i bought a nose ring, jessy! im going to keep swaping and changing now im getting into the swing of nose jewels!.
so hampi. hampi, hampi, hampi! what a beauty this earth does hold, and what a curse that all of you guys haven't seen it! it's soooo hard to put into words, honestly, so i think you must google or wikipedia it or something and read the words of somebody more journalistic. but il give it a go!
ok so tara now! sorry to confuse you but we are swapping roles and alice is putting her pictures up now! well we arrived in hampi and met up with Kevin again. it was nice to see him again after a long time! as per usual he had made lots of friends and seemed to be quite popular in hampi! We stayed in a really nice guest house it was called rockies guest house (rocky was so
cute you could put him in your pocket!). The guest house was quite expensive but it was nice to refresh ourselves catch up with some washing and have a warm shower. However we wanted a cold shower most of the time it was boiling in hampi! The temperature was such a change from ooty which was cool. Instead of the shops selling winter hats and woolen jumpers they were selling vest tops and skirts. Alice and i have been rooting for a chinese fan for ages now but still havent succeeded in getting one. Instead we keep using alice's postcards which she still hasnt sent from 3 weeks ago! Kevin and his friend dylan frm new zealand (aka derek according to me..... mum i really do blame you for this! I never seem to get names right here!) had rented scooters so that day we joined with them and went on a little adventure to watch the sunset on one of the temples. It was so strange hampi, wherever you looked boulders were visible with ruined temples on top. It was really cool though, alice called it dinosaur land and i thought it looked like something of a computer game!
We have been trying to find out the geographical reason why hampi is like it is yet all the guides only provide us with hindu myths! Basically it is thought that the monkey gods threw down the boulders to show thier strength. Ok so the next day we headed down to the river quite early near hampi. I have never seen anything so strange yet so endearing. All the locals were washing thier clothes and washing themselves in the river. It was all very communal! Steve, kevin and Dylan headed straight to the water and started chatting with all the locals while alice and i watched pleasantly. After a while i thught i would go for a bit of a paddle but in a burst of spontaneity ended up in the water myself. It was really refreshing but hard to keep standing because it was so slippy (probably because of everyone's muck but lets not think about that!) so while we enjoyed our morning conversations with the local Hampian's alice got mobbed by indian families wanting pictures with her and wanting to check out her flash camera! Later that day we headed out on the scooters again to about a
trillion temples (after a while you do get templed out but its still good to soak in the scenery). Alice and i also had a go on the scooters. We were both a bit shaky at first but they are pretty easy to drive. they were really cheap to hire about $2.00 a day (there is no pound sign so the dollar sign on indian computers!). our third day was very lazy! Its easy to get caught up in the chilled out mode of travelling! We headed down to the river again and went for a swim but we also managed to see Lakshmi (the elephant at the local temple) come down to the river to get bathed. A bizarre sight i must say! The temple men scrubbed her for about half an hour! So now we can say we have bathed in the water with "sacred elephants" a prettyy disgusting thought really! Alice and i planned to browse at the local shops but somehow managed to get caught up in hampi's shops. We went into one shop and met this guy called jaz (silly me kept calling him raj think it was because he was from rajastan!) who was
so enthusuiastic about his shop! he was so funny. Yea we went a bit wild in the shop and i now have numerous more dresses to add to my collection. They were all too cheap to resist though! Later we met up with some friends we had met the day previously. Fate really wanted us to meet these people! We had seen them in ooty numerous times but never really said hello and then saw them on a train from bangalore until we finally saw them in hampi and started chatting. We had planned to go up to a temple near us and watch the sunset. The view from here was amazing. you got a 360 degree view of hampi and the millions of boulders and temples. we collected some fire wood and set up camp. Two of our friends from sweden were studying folk music and had brought along a guitar so they sang some swedish folk music to us. The girl had such a sweet voice and the music was very catchy. After we made a fire but because the wood was so dry it lasted literally five minutes. By this time everyone apart from alice, steve and
dillan decided to go home. it was getting dark by this time and we were all a bit cautious of monkeys. Dillan initiated the idea to get sticks from the leftover fire to protect us from the monkeys, we called them "monkey sticks!" soon after all four of us had our monkey sticks and were in charge of the temple defending it from the aggressive monkeys and other unknown fears! All night we checked out our area to make sure that the monkeys werent coming or any bears or leopards! We scared ourselves even more when we decided to make a trip into the temple and checked out the freaky goddess shrine thing dressed in green. We then took another trip this time without our flashlights just to spook ourselves. After a couple of hours we finally drifted off too sleep but were soon awakened (apart from steve he seems to be able to sleep anywhere) by the buzz of mosquitos. We had a very uncomfortable sleep on the rough ground and we were all extremely hot hiding from the mosquitos under our covers. Dillan had a weak moment and at one point said he had had enough and was
going to go back down to his lodge. It was a crazy night but good fun! We woke to the sound of an indian man boiling chai on top if the temple waiting for the daily rush of tourists and we watched the sunrise before going down the temple. we did pay for our fun night on the temple though as we have lots of mosquit bites and alice's face is covered in ant bites. So here we are now at the internet cafe in goa. We arrived on Saturday night after a long days travelling. We are in the north of goa at a place called arambol. It is quite quiet and dont think its as busy in other places in goa but its really nice (not quite as nice as gokarna though.) we are staying in another beach hut on a relaxed beach. Alice and i dont know what we think to goa so far. It seems quite touristy and dont know whether we can get into a beach routine. We are planning on heading down to Baga beach though and meeting one of Alice's friends there. I think here will be better as she can show us
the nightlife (its meant to be good in baga) and perhaps show us more of goa. It is also not as cultured in goa. Last night eating a meal we noticed how emersed we had become in the indian culture. All three of us were eating with our hands having some indian food while alice noticed that we were getting some strange look from some tourists! The head wobble isnt as prominent in goa too and Goans dont tend to
use it that often. Ahh how we miss the Indian ways! OK so toodle pip will tell you about our Goa adventures shortly! love Alice and Tara xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Heather!
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Tis Heather again!!
love reading your blogs you two!! all i can think of is how jealous i am! i wish i had to potect temples from monkeys!! hehe. i hope u ave bought plenty of clothes, me thinks we shud all go out wearing something from ur travels when you get bac! its actually sunny here today an so me an toby r gunna go for a picnic up pendle!! perhaps not quite as picturesque as goa or india!!! have fun an be careful!! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx