The cultural pilgrimage begins

For anyone traveling Goa to Hampi, do not get a bus!! We were told not to by other travelers and the travel agency that we booked with but had no other choice; the trains all book up 2 weeks in advance.
Firstly we had no aircon which we had paid for, that wasn't really a problem but one of the drivers smelt like drink and didn't know where anyone was supposed to be sitting. That said, and although we were very aprehansive it all went fine.....untill..... the second driver took over...
They must work to schedules or just want to get home early because he was driving as fast as possible and didn't really see the point of speed bumps!
We were sleeping at the back of the bus and we could clearly feel the intended purpose, after about 2 hours of being thrown around Claire finally had enough when her head hit the roof for the second time and went up to give the driver a piece of her mind.
He was brushing his teeth at the time and couldn't respond except to nod and cowar.Thankfully the bus nearly stopped before each speed bump for the next few hours.

If anyone does get the bus I wish you all the best and hope your ribs break cleanly.


Hampi is a very interesting place. We went over to the Island and rented bike one day to look around. There is plenty of walking and rock climbing which we didn't do much of; it's 45*C here and it feels like a desert.
We did climb hundreds of steps to see the Monkey Temple, for one of the Hindu gods that has a monkey face who I can't remember the name of. There were tons of cheeky monkies only too happy to rid you of any food you have in sight.

There ain't much or anything to do in Hampi at night time so we had a few well deserved and needed early nights. After 10pm - 11pm everything shuts.


On our last day we get a guide to take us around all the monuments, there are literally hundreds or even thousands, as our guide suggested. He took us to the main ones and gave us a really intresting tour and history lesson. All the monumants here used to be temples but were all destroyed in wars with Muslims. It was once a capital city and has a massive palace in ruins, some of it is still being excivated and they are still finding gold!! We weren't allowed in to those areas :(

That night our Rickshaw took us to the train station for our overnight train to Bangalore. Once we arrived in Bangalore we wasted a day before our 4 hour flight to Jaipur up north.

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