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Published: March 17th 2008
.....Until you're staring the prospect of death in the face."...Now let me explain:
We boarded the bus in Panjim on Friday evening, ready to head on to the amazing Hampi for a change of pace. This was no ordinary bus....It was a humongous, rickety, cheap government run bus from the dark ages! We boarded with an open mind and decided that people do this kind of thing every day so we shouldn't be afraid and anyway we'd got extra leg room as we'd bagged seats at the front!....How wrong we were! 3 hours into a 10hr journey, our knuckles were white, our nerves were in tatters and we were confident that there was no hope in making it any further, let alone to Hampi!
2 hours into the journey, we began the accent up a huge mountain, windey roads, steep drops and for some unknown reason an ever flowing stram of haulage trucks coming from the opposite direction - taking up the whole of the road!
The headlights on our bus were no better than candles and so it was impossible to see the edge of the oncoming trucks until the very last second when the driver would
swerve out of its way and dangerously close to the cliff edge....we very nearly asked the driver to stop and let us off but decided to move towards the back and hang on for dear life!
Need less to say, we made it in the end and are now nearing the end of our stay in this awe inspiring village. (Si, you'd love it here, the gravity defying boulders make for great climbing, and the walks are amazing!)
(Dan), So we arrived and found a nice guest house and went off to explore, the place we found for lunch was out of this world , as we sat back looking over the river in the shade of a huge Mango tree there were Monkeys playing overhead in the trees colourful Kingfishers & buttleflies flying past, water buffalo grazing past and people working in the rice fields below, not to mention the Banana plantations either side of us.
From the guest house we can see the magnificent pyramid shaped temple two very small streets away, the other night there was an electrical storm and the power went out in the whole village and the night sky and stars
lit up.!! loverly.
(Nic) Yesterday we hired a couple of bikes and set off to see the surrounding ruins, temples and scenery - apparantly it's a bit of a novelty here to see a girl on a bike and the attention we got was very amusing! Anyway, take a look at the pics to see how amazing they all were.
Last night we went back to the mango tree for dinner to a chorus of frogs ribbeting and crickets chirping, fire-flies lighting up the sky and a manner of other creepy beauties which I tried not to think about, despite Dan shining the tourch around to show me with far too much enjoyment at my squirming!!
So today we are just chilling, ready for our bus ride (private and more expensive this time, so hopefully a bit safer!) to the coastal town of Gokarna, which is supposed to be very beautiful and religious hot spot. We will be there for a few days before getting the train to Mysore on Thursday.
Hope everyone is ok and thank you all for your messages, it's great to hear from you - please dont be offended if we dont
reply personally, the computers here are a bit dodgy at times!
Mel and Si, - Sorry we didn't get to speak to you, hopefully we'll catch up soon.
Love to you all...
xxxx
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DAD JOHN
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monkey
Hi pleased you made the bus journey ok it must of been a bite frittening. Great photos which one is the monkey???sound as if you are having a great time keep safe Love Dad xxx