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Published: August 21st 2012
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Disclaimer: no Abreva or latex was used in the making of this blog.
Ariel teased me that I would write a few entries in my blog and then neglect it for the rest of my trip... He was partly right. But I am back! So put down the pitchforks and torches.
I'm going to recount my two trips I've had so far within India: Mysore (sometime in July) and Hampi (this past weekend). Let me start by saying not all trips are created equal. Mysore is first up.
Last minute another expat here for only a few weeks invited me to go to Mysore, about a three and a half hour drive from Bangalore. As there was low Malaria risk, little cost involved, and I had been spending all my time in Bangalore, I signed up. Since it was quite a few weeks back, and I am struggling to care enough about this trip to recount it, I'll just sum it up below:
Mysore is only 88 mi away from Bangalore. In NY/NJ, you can cover 88 miles in just over an hour. In India, it takes three times
as long. And there is a lot of fucking horn honking. Even when there are no other cars around.
There is a palace at Mysore. It is actually rather beautiful and breathtaking. However, you can't wear shoes inside and the floor is about as clean as a Rodeo. And there are a lot of tourists bumping into you. And you can't take pictures. Why? I was told they don't want the secret beauty of the palace advertised. Uhhhhh.
We went to the Olive Garden for lunch. Funny thing: I checked the corporate website, and the Olive Garden doesn't have a location in Mysore, India. Go figure.
Mysore, when translated directly to English, means "lackluster".
Our driver's ring tone on his cell was Justin Bieber's "Baby"
Alright, now that Mysore is out of the way, Hampi time! Hampi was absolutely
fantastic. This trip was also planned last minute, however, whereas Mysore was just three of us poor souls, Hampi was thirteen! Nine expats and four locals from work. To give you an idea of the adventure: the trip started out with thirteen people
with luggage piling into a twelve person van. Luckily, we are all rather agreeable individuals and decided that it would be OK to take turns sitting on the floor. The driver had laid down an astro turf matt that ran the length of the van and, when padded with jackets and towels, wasn't all that bad. It was actually preferrable to some of the seats. I, being the lucky bastard that I am, was blessed enough to pick a broken seat. Before I go any further, let me disclaim that most everything so far, if not broken, has had a funny way of working. My seat in particular had a nice reclining function; except, the mechanism wasn't functioning properly, and everytime we hit a pot hole (which was approximately everything 3.5 minutes), my seat would go from a 135 degree recline, to 180 degrees and straight up to 90 degrees. This made sleeping a challenge on the 8.5 hour overnight trip.
Okay, now to the juicy stuff (and when I say juicy, it was literally juicy. Ready?). About 2.5 hours into the trip, the driver stopped for a potty break and some coffee. No, silly, we did not stop at a rest stop; those do not exist on the particular highway we took (and I doubt they actually exist on any highway in India). Instead, we stopped at a roadside stand, made of twigs and palm branches, and inhabited by other weary travellers and local animals (like, cows and dogs) alike. A bit sleepy and disoriented (it was now ~1:30 am and the driver had just made us watch
Apocalypto) we all piled out of the van, looking for a place to relieve our bladders. The ladies scurried behind a hut, and the gentelmen searched for their own trees. Several guys were ahead of me and I struggled to find my way to the "men's room" as it was rather dark and I didn't have my glasses on. After finding my way over some rocky terrain (a product of dried mud and tractor wheels) I reached my friends. And, just as fate would have it, during my struggle to squint to see what was ahead of me, I violated the first rule of mobility in India:
always watch the ground below your feet; you never know A. when there will cease to be ground there or B. what that ground is made of... And, so, as these things go, wearing my Cole Haan slip-ons, my right foot descended into what I can only imagine (hope) was a puddle of grabage mud, of a smell that, I promise you, YOU CANNOT IMAGINE. Holy fuck, it was
disgusting; and not the regular kind of digusting, it was the most disgusting type of disgusting you can imagine. To this day, I still refer to that puddle of deplorable rubbish (I think it actually was rotting garbage mixed with mud and other "things"), as mud, while my colleagues maintain that it was a mix of... well... I think it's time I move on.
After the "mud" incident, everyone hopped back onto the bus and "passed out" for the remainder of the trip (again, do not question my use of quotes. They are very deliberate). We arrived in Hampi at approximately 7:00 am and checked into our rooms. The "resort" we stayed at had absolutely magnificant grounds. The rooms were just alright, though they smelled like sweaty socks and farts a bit; nothing we could not bare after an 8+ hour drive. We all napped for two hours, caught our complimentary breakfast of North Indian cuisine (fluffy rice pancakes that kind of looked like uncrustables, chickpea stew, and COFFEE), showered and got dressed for a day of guided tours. Our tour guide, Raj, was extremely knowledgable and did a great job of dealing with 13 sleep deprived types-As. He brought us through the ruins of what was the
Vijayanagara Empire's ancient capitals and gave us all a little bit of much needed history. We saw temples, road in boats, took plenty of pictures (check Facebook) and had an overall great time. And, surprisingly, no one got on anyone's nerves; somehow thirteen personalities seemed to mix just fine. Maybe we were all too tired to care, or maybe we were all so starved for something other than Bangalore that the sustinance that Hampi provided was enough to keep us all in good spirits. Either way, the long drive there and back, ruining my favorite shoes, and the sweaty sock-fart smell of our rooms were totally worth it. Hampi was just was the doctor ordered for all of us.
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