peace and quite at last

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At last have finaly found somewhere that is gorgeous....Hampi, we stayed in a lovley little guesthouse called shanti. Hampi was a place many many years ago where there used to be huge bizzars trading goods like rubys and gold. Now inside the city walls there are cute guesthouses nice restraunts and also temples dating back to the 14 and 15th century.

We spent a day walking round the ruins on a guided tour and we met a german girl called claudia who we befriended for the next few days. Learnt all about the history of the buildings and their importance. Lots of the temples had been turned in ruins as they were hindu temples and the muslims tore them down when they invaded hampi. Some temples do still remain as they had muslim influenzed archutecture as the king at the time of building was a good king and had mixed religion people all living in the city together so these building were spared.

Hindus do still come here on their pilgramage so this is a holy place (also no beer). The way it works is that if the statue of the god inside the temple is broken then the hindus dont come here to worship anymore as it is believed that the spirit of the god has gone. There are 3 main gods, brammah (the creator), vishnu and shiva (the destroyer)...and then there are loads more that all mean different things.

spent the 2nd day on a bike tour round the ruins just outside of the city walls, we saw the elephant stables, a huge old swimming pool, various temples to worship in and where the king and queen used to live.

In the heat of the day spent most of our time just chilling out by the river boulder watching, its weird but you can just look at these big rocks for hours.

There was a really good point to watch the sunset on top of some rocks...getting there abit of a mission in flip flops and we were warned there are alot of muggings so dont take any valuables...it was ok though jade had her rock hard remainder of her cookie she had braught and tried to knaw though with no luck, that was our weapon of choice if anyone tried any funny business!

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