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Published: March 4th 2008
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Magic Baba's
haha! They were pretty fun to hang out with We woke up at 5:30am to catch the 2nd class sleeper train from Goa to Hospet, which is the gateway city to the magical little village of Hampi. I'm travelling with a couple friends I met, Danny from L.A. and Nicole from Alberta who are also exploring the vastness of India. I haven't wrote my Goa blog yet since I've spent a few days there, and will be spending a few more days there when I get back from Hampi, so I figure I'll update it then. Goa has got a great hippy vibe going on there, I really enjoy it and it was hard to make the decision to leave it.
I've heard even better things about Hampi though. It seems everyone who has been to India says, whatever I do I must visit Hampi. I feel lucky we figured out how to take a train here. All I heard is that there was an overnight bus ride from hell on one of India's worst roads. And that we'd have to do it twice there and back.....ugh. I've been on these rides before, been in 2 minor bus accidents, and they're nothing short of life threatoning. So naturally I
Magic Boulders
haha! They were pretty fun to hang out on. Hampi is littered with millions of balancing boulders avoid these at all costs. The trian ride was nice. Took about 7 hours on a hard, slightly padded bench, but the scenery was incredible.
One of the most incredible things you could do in India is experience the train. Riding past villages seeing how they live their life in the middle of nowhere away from the modernized cities and away from any tourist areas. The culture inside the train is interesting to as chai wallahs will come every few minutes calling out chai, and other wallahs calling out things you can't understand and offering you food that looks absoultely horrid. However after 7 hours you keep hearing them yelling something like "Ogerty ogerty ogerty!" and you just have to try something and hope for the best. Especially hoping you don't get sick, as the toilet on the train is just a hole in the floor, that you could look down to the speeding tracks below. You also see the harsh realities of India's poverty as a contant stream of beggers, street kids, and severly deformed people make their way through the isles asking for spare rupees. Looking them in the eyes you could see their pain, their struggle
Ancient Stone Chariot
in the 1400's the empire built a great city, in which we explored the amazing ruins with life. They look so defeated, and their permanant frown shows that they haven't smiled in a long time.
Hampi is a very special place in India. One of the Hindu's holiest cities. It's a small village of just 1300 people. The people here are very poor, but enjoying the influx of tourist dollars that are coming in. The place is littered with ancient ruins spanning over 60km's. However what makes this place so unique is the millions of giant balancing boulders that litter the landscape. It looks like Bedrock City from the Flinstones. A complete oposite to futuristic Tokyo that I came from, not even 3 weeks ago. It seems time has stood still here for several hundred years.
Hampi, a tiny little town, which sits above a rocky river and under a giant 600 year old temple. The people here are, of course friendly as ever. You could see the poverty in their clothing and the expressions in their faces that they give sometimes. The streets are little more than dirt roads, filled with cows, cow shit and garbage. Typical India! On a better note they have a near constant stream of electricity now due to
the tourists. It's quite atmospheric, it's full of cool restaraunts, shops, ancient temples and of course giant boulders. It's quiet, and there's not much to do once you've seen the sites. But that's the magic of it, it's just amazing to sit around and watch the balancing boulders. It's good a crazy energy to this city, at night my dreams are really crazy. Hard to explain!
This is the amazing India that I enjoy and love. South India and Goa are pretty amazing places, however to me, they are missing the magic of constant festivals, Sadhu's (Hindu Holy men), dead people being paraded by you. Hampi has all this in more. In fact it seems to be the centre of it all. Walking down the ancient streets you can hear chanting of Hindu preists, who will bless you by putting a red dot on your forehead in exchange for a few rupees. In each temple you can witness everyday Hindu devotee life. And if you'd like, after waiting in a long line up, you can get blessed by an elaphant who will take 1 rupee from you and bless you by tapping his nose on your head.
In
Indian School Bus
Kids from a different state, Andrah Pradesh 100's of km away ride in the back of this school bus to see the ancient ruins. the morning the 3 of us set out to tour the great expanse of the ruins. I've done this a few times in Angkor Wat (Cambodia), Bagan (Burma), Ayuttaya and Sukhothai (Thailand). They're all so amazing and so different from eachother. The balancing boulders and the people who occupy these ruins make this place interesting to look at and experience. It's also place with "Magic Baba's" who will sit you down and show you all kinds of simple but cool magic tricks. Then they'll ask you to sign a book, state your country and write down how much your "donation". You will see that others have done the same, and have put down numbers such as 200 rupees ($5.00) 500 rupees ($12.00) etc. Many tourists fall for this trick, the Magic Baba's just ad an extra 0. I offer them just a few rupees in which they protest but then finally accept haha. Everywhere in India has all kinds of these clever ways to part you with 10 times the amount of money you've intended to part with.
Later that day somehow I convinced our Rickshaw driver to let me drive the Rickshaw. How many tourists can say that
they have actually driven a Rickshaw?!! I'm hoping to next drive a tuk tuk in Thailand and then I'll be satisfied. In the meantime I need practice driving on the wrong side of the road as I almost had a head on collision with another Rickshaw, sideswiping a bunch of goats.....yikes!!
Alcohol and meat are strictly forbidden in Hampi due to religeous reasons. I've heard rumours that you could get all this on the other side of the river but for some reason I'm not to interested. One doesn't come to Hampi to party, I can do that in Goa. The vegetarian food is great here, although it does give me a bit of an upset stomach probably due to the lack of cleanliness. Nighttime here usually consists of having a cold shower, and scooping hot water out of a bucket to clean up. And then just chatting and meeting other travellers. Seems to be a lot of Canadians here in India.
The 2nd day we explored the other side of the river. Looks really cool and relaxed. Not such an Indian vibe, it's more touristy but probably a good place to meet lots of people. Our Rickshaw
Sadhu
In a temple inside a cave driver seems to not like Israeli's, and Russians saying that all they do is smoke chirras (hashish) and party haha. We rented some motorbikes and explored a monkey temple and hung out by a lake. This is one of the only places in India that one could rent a motorbike without risking your life!
As I mentioned before I try to avoid Indian busses at all costs, especially overnight busses. And as luck would have it our train back to Goa is overbooked. The Indian people assure us tha the are very nice busses, and I'm sure they are, as far as Indian standards go. But I also know that the road from Hampi to Goa is one of the worst in all of India. So we didn't give up. There's always someone in town who can find a train ticket on the tourist quota, or emergency quota or any other quota in exchange for a 200 rupee ($5.00) baksheesh. A baksheesh is another word for tip aka gift aka bribe. As luck would have it we found someone in our hotel who works for the Indian Railways. Which, I guess isn't hard to find since Indian Railways is
the worlds 2nd largest employer with 2.5 million employees. So after some kicking and screming we got our train tickets afterall.....yay!! To celebrate I will drink 40 cups of deliciously sweet Chai.
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Davieeeeeeee
Be careful of getting drunk by 40 cups of sweet Chai Davie.. Hampi looks like one of the amazing city in India. The architecture there is really amazing... I wish i could once visit there... It's nice to hear you had a great time there... and also came up with lots of pix :P Take care ^^