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Published: October 27th 2008
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Hampi/ South India
everything needs to be transported with this boat - also bicicles and motorbikes HAMPI
After Goa I headed with a night bus (sleeper) to Hampi - it seemed there’re more road holes and sandy streets than asphalt on the streets… but there’re only two trains a week to Hampi. For sure it was even bumpier because my bed was located in the very back of the bus - sometimes I jumped with my whole back some centimetres 😞
It was so hot in Hampi although it was 9 o’clock in the morning… I had to take a riksha, a boat to get to the other side of the river where was supposed to be the hostel I made a reservation for a room. When I arrived they told me it’s the double of the price - there’s another hostel on the other side of the river with the 100 % same name! So I had to search another room and found one for 1, 20 Euros a night: a bed in a small room - enough! A great hostel with an amazing view! It was full of Israelis - they just join Israelis and are forming huge groups, talking in Hybro language… so it’s a little bit difficult to talk to them
or to join them. Luckily at the same hostel I met lots of Spanish speaking people there: a couple (Italian, Argentinean) with their 4 years old son from Sitges near Barcelona (the first time I saw it’s no problem at all to travel with a small child) and another couple form Cadiz/ Barcelona and another man from Girona near Barcelona. I enjoyed it so much to talk in Spanish again!
So finally it was better to be on that side of the river! There’s no police so they can sell alcohol and meet there - they even put it on the menu card… I don’t know what they tell the police if the see that - or they just pay… great wood oven pizza!
I visited some temples in Hampi - but it’s all the same and there is not really any kind of explications. So I did a whole day cooking class! WOW! You know me - there’s nothing more to say how much I enjoyed that day!
I shared a cab with an Israelian guy to go from Hampi to Hospet where my train was supposed to leave - we had a chai tea and I
Hampi/ South India
women use to transport everything on their heads wanted call home for the birthday of my sister - then suddenly there was monsoon rain and nothing worked anymore… water everywhere! It was so hectically to get my luggage that I stored in a travel agency so I forgot a bag there with my lonely planet and sleeping bag inside… but as you can imagine the solution didn’t wait for a long time: at the luggage store in the train station of Bangalore I met a German couple I made a city tour with - so I could borrow their travel guide to take notes of the hostels, telephone numbers, tours I planned to do until the end of my trip - so my personal lonely planet exists in one page now😊
BANGALORE
As I lost my lonely planet in the travel agency in Hampi I asked a German couple in the cloakroom of the train station if I could have a look at their travel guide - then we booked a city tour - It took us a while until we left the tourist information to do the city tour… first we had to walk 2 streets to the bus, then to wait for the driver,
Hampi/ South India
waiting for the boat... nice surroundings then he drove us around the block to leave us next to where we booked the tour, then we had to change the bus, to wait for people (it took a while until the Indian persons agreed where to take a seat…) - then our tour started… it’s not a very nice town but there’re a lot of Western Style Mansions. As I wanted to write down all the necessary information of their travel guide I didn’t go into the science museum - they said it was funny, not a museum at all but interesting to see: for example a moving plastic dinosaur making noise - declared as the 'dinosaur alive'. In the end they brought us to a shop to buy Indian art - I stayed in the bus again; at least I didn’t have to discuss with them why I didn’t buy anything.
As the town wasn’t that nice I went to a shopping mall - I still didn’t see a real Bollywood movie so I wanted to do that. It was an action movie - so there’s still the dancing Bollywood movie missing! You understand them without knowing Hindi language - also the action movie! Sometimes
Hampi/ South India
the famous temple of Hampi (500 years old) they say some sentences in English - generally it’s the posh language in India: rich people speak English, also in the families - perhaps it’s comparable that in the past in Europe rich people used to speak french.
It was a quite time lasting procedure to entry into the supermarket with Western Style products within the shopping mall: I had to leave my backpack at the entrance, got a plastic bag for what I bought with a fixing strip around it; after paying another guy checked my bag with the ticket - then I got my backpack bag.
On the way back to the train station (I only stayed for one day in Bangalore) suddenly it started raining a lot - it’s the second monsoon (North-East-monsoon) so the rickshaw driver tried to rip me off - they brought me to another, closer train station - luckily there was a prepaid-stand so I paid only 64 Rs instead of 200 Rs I was asked for before.
I thought I would know how train stations work…. But my train wasn’t shown on the electronical signs so I had to ask again… at least I knew how to find my coach: it
doesn’t show before the train arrives where your coach is, you can only ask where your coach could stop more or less. When the train arrives the classes are shown on electronical signs so everybody starts running to his coach.
I met some nice girls in the train - they’re software developer in Bangalore, not married - living the modern way of Indian living.
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