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Published: April 1st 2009
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So a local bus took us from Hospet to Hampi, a holy city declared patrimony of humanity. This is a city located in the middle of a huge amount of stony boulders that makes it look like a Flintstone movie set! It used to be capital of some old Indian empire so it’s surrounded by ruins of temples, palaces and statues that gives it a very interesting look.
Hampi is a town divided in two by a river, on one side you find all the temples and ruins, and on the other there were a lot of hostels with nice and relaxed bars attached to it (The best place to hang out). Since the cheaper accommodation was on the temple side, we were forced to cross the river everyday, and to do that we were supposed to pay a boat to cross it… Or, as we soon found out, we could simply roll up our pants and cross the river on a lower part! So we got wet quite a lot those days.
In that river we also got a chance to see our first elephant swimming! It was the main temple elephant (and one that actually gives you blessing
with it’s trunk for a rupee!) that everyday went down to the river to take a bath.
We also hired bicycles to ride around. That’s how we got to go to the lake. After more than an hour of riding under the scalding sun and finally conquering the last hill where the lake is set, we found that there was not a tree to be seen anywhere! Waiting hopelessly in the sun, a kid suddenly popped out of nowhere and asked the most welcoming question: Do you guys want a cold beer? Ha! Somebody must like us up there! So we cooled ourselves with the drinks and despite the sign that said that there were crocodiles in the water, we jumped off the bridge, following the advice of the locals! The lake turned out to be a small dam surrounded by more of these beautiful boulders that we found all over Hampi, and there we saw another of the memorable sunsets of this trip. And of course, there were no crocodiles in the water!
Hampi also has a monkey temple (it appears to be very common this “monkey temple” thing!) from where we got to see a very
beautiful sunset. There Amanda got a very frightening encounter with a monkey that cost us a full bag of German cakes (German bakeries are a success in India… even when there‘s not a German baker in miles…) On the way up the temple (a very long staircase up a mountain) Amanda got stopped by a hungry monkey that hissed at her in a very violent way… She decided to shoo it away by swinging the cake bag at it, which provoked an even angrier monkey that almost jumped at Amanda (or so she claimed) To what our brave Amanda responded by launching our bag of cakes up in the air (in an attempt to make it out of reach from the monkey, and us for that matter) and ran up hill on a loud scream. Luckily the monkey wasn’t that interested in food any more, and didn’t do much else than take a surprise look at Amanda running.
Another day we rented scooters and went to the local waterfall. It turned up to be a very nice rocky river with many holes but not even a cascade in sight! The thing is the river grows up to 10 m
in the monsoon season and creates a very nice waterfall between the rocks, but what we saw was just a lot of rock with thundering water going under! We took the opportunity to do some bathing in the small pools that the river creates in some calm parts. Very beautiful place.
After that we went to explored the ruins of the old empire! We drove around all day visiting this and that ruin, and on the way we got welcomed everywhere by the always cheerful locals. Monkeys roamed freely around the ruins, and also did the bats, that crowded the ceilings of the dark rooms of the temples. Another shy little animal that we always found everywhere we went were the little squirrels (or may be chipmunks?) in their constant search for food (not unlike the one on Ice Age!).
We ended that day on a roof top restaurant eating pizza and watching Slumdog Millionaire before its release on the movie theatres, a nice bonus from the local piracy of DVDs!
As a nice treat in Hampi, Amanda and Nat got a chance to improved their culinary skills in one of the friendly restaurants that we often went to.
Holy cow!
A carved cow in the middle of the river! They did a cooking day class by choosing the dishes they wanted to learn and then we all got together to taste it! The people at the restaurant were so cool that instead of charging for a cooking class they only charge us for the price of the meals! Some of the dishes they learned were Palak Paneer, Malai Kofta, Vegetable Korma, Hampi Chicken Curry and Vegetable Manchurian. Can’t wait to get back to NZ to see what comes out of the kiwi kitchen of the India flavours!
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