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December 18th 2007

Published: December 18th 2007

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His Dudeness

Hampi

Tori and I at the 'Chill Out' cafe in Hampi...

After leaving the paradise that was the Andaman’s, we decided to ease our way back into India... And the best way to do that is go to some well known destinations, which are easy to reach and where little thinking or planning is required...

First stop, Hampi, once the capital of India's largest and strongest Hindu empire, now a great place to relax in between some fantastic landscapes and evocative ruins... Hampi is blessed with some incredible monuments... You don't have to go far to visit them, as parts of them are in the middle of this little village... One can sit on a rooftop terrace and contemplate the grandeur of what once was... Or not, if you are not in the mood...

I had a nice walk around the area, visiting boulders, ruins and what not... Tori, had a shorter walk, after she got stomach trouble once again... Her walk consisted of a rush back to our room and the toilet... Delhi belly seems to be following her around unfortunately...

All this wasn't made any better by our night bus to Goa... The bus was fine, the road not so... Even a real bed in a bus,

Hampi

Carvings on the wall of the Virupaksha Temple

can't compensate for the potholes they call roads in this country... A lot of shaking around was our lot! Ah well, we made it and after a quick walk around Panjim and Old Goa to visit the churches that the Portuguese left behind, we made our way down to Agonda...

Now Agonda is supposedly Goa's quietest beach, but Havelock, the Andaman's most touristy beach, would seem comatose compared to Agonda... Still it was nice, and the reason for visiting was in the hope to see an Olive Ridley turtle nest on the beach... One of the rarest of the sea turtles so it seems... And we were lucky, or actually, it was mostly Tori's doing... She decided to go for a night patrol up and down the beach and found one nesting... Than she ran back to our hut and woke me up! So now I have seen one of those little buggers nesting!

This was cause for celebration and as it turned out I was going to visit some friends in Benaulim the next day... They were two Brazilian brothers I had met on my overland trip to India at the beginning of last year in Sofia

Hampi

View of the Virupaksha Temple...

and Istanbul... Since than, they have traveled through Africa, The Middle East and now had arrived in India... I can say a lot of beer was drunk that night... More than that I can't tell you as I don't remember that much it... But I am sure it was good!

The next day was less fun, but so it goes... You take the good with the bad... I faced my hangover with a laugh and left in high spirits to Mumbai, the only place in the world where they sell their vibrators next to their sunglasses on the street!

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