Margao to Hampi

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4/3/10: Crap! Another shitty sleep as the mosquito’s chewed us all night, well we hoped it was mosquitoes and not bed bugs. We had the fan on full with repellent on and they still managed to bite us, they found a spot where the air was still enough to get a run up and kamikaze dive into my arm hitting so hard it would wake me up.
We packed the last remaining things and discovered that I had to wake up the fat pig Indian to let us out of the gate at 6:00am in the morning. It 5-10 min of knocking on the door early in the morning to get him out of bed, or maybe he was trying to roll out the whole time.
We walked the 1.5km to the train station with our packs on trying to forget about the heat that had never dissipated from the day before. The orange ball of baking heat started to appear over the horizon just as we got to the train station and as usual there were no signs to tell you where to go so you have to ask. On this occasion our train had an unusual amount of western travellers all going to Hampi. Finally something came over the speakers about our train saying that it was on time and leaving from platform two, the train ended up being 45min late which is on time for India. We spoke to a UK couple that were also travelling India she spoke about the massive waterfall and view over the cliff that we would pass so I armed myself with the camera as we started to go through forest, tunnels and then finally caught a glimpse of the waterfall through the trees. Unaware the train was climbing up the mountain until finally going over the pass. The forest was gorgeous to see as we were starting wonder if there was anything like this left in India. As you read this I’m updating my blog on the train, my back and arse is starting to hurt from the poorly padded filthy dirty hessian stuffed seats. There’s no room to put our huge packs except for where we sleep, and I so want to sleep right now. We just got a tip from the UK travels, they say we can get Valium over the counter so we might buy some just to recharge the batteries as they swear by it. We arrived at the Hampi train station to find tuk tuk drivers salivating at the new meat getting off the train. We managed to dodge the first couple until finally getting one that wouldn’t take no for an answer. He wanted 150rs and as he spoke to me in one ear a fellow traveller whispered in another “100rs” I turned to the driver and said “100rs to Hampi with no extra cost” he agreed and within a second we were loaded and on our way. It was probably 10km away from the station and it turned out to be a good price for us until we were stop just before town by a man demanding 10rs for the entry of all tourist tuk tuks. We hadn’t heard anything about this and I got up the driver for not including the 10rs in the price. It was only 10rs so we didn’t kick up much of a fuss until he asked for 20rs/person. It clearly stated 10rs per tuk tuk so we had to reminded him again what the ticket said. I still haven’t found out weather this is a scam or not, walking over the rise of the hill confirmed the town was only 200m away. With packs on again we were like a freshly killed carcass as the vultures circled around us wanting to know if we wanted a so called cheap room. We quickly let them know six times that we weren't interested and one young kid didn’t get the hint, I mistakenly took a business card thinking it might keep him happy. After this he ended up sticking to me like shit to a blanket just in case I went to the hotel without him and he wouldn’t get his commission. We found a restaurant get out of the heat until I was at least able to find a guest house whilst Jacinta looked after the bags. This gave me freedom to move around without a pack it also didn’t make me look so desperate. After a drink I took one step outside the restaurant and I immediately had the shadow of the young boy behind me repeating “come and look at my hotel, very clean very nice” I started to lose my temper after I said NO for the 20th time and by this time I was determined not to look at the hotel even if it was the only one left with rooms. I had to virtually stop and look him in the eye and say “what part of NO do you not understand, when I say NO it means NO! I’m not going to look at your hotel!!” this shut him up for a full 10sec until we finally approach and past his hotel, then as I was walked to the next hotel he started to sell me a room from this hotel as well, I was tired of dealing with him and asked the hotel owner to get rid of him she did this in seconds just by muttering a few words in Hindi.
The prices quoted for some guest houses were peak season prices and there was no way I was going to pay that sort of money so I found a little guest house with just two rooms that were both available and managed to get a room for a third of the price quoted by the others so we ended up staying in a family owned two room guesthouse with attached bathroom called AUM Guesthouse for just 200rs. They were a family of four Mum, Dad, and daughters and they turned out to be the nicest family making sure we were combatable at all times, they even offered us their own shower on the last day as we already checked out that afternoon.
It was very hot in Hampi and the afternoon could not have come soon enough to cool things down. We caught up on skype and e-mail to fill in the afternoon before climbing the temple hill behind our guest house called Virupaksha temple to watch the sun disappear through the haze in the distance resulting in a fiery red ball. I was so impressed by the sunset that I spent more time trying to get that perfect photo that sitting down and soaking it all in. We finished off the night with a hot shower and they didn't even have hot water, the one time you want to have a cold shower to cool off and the water was hot. We cranked the fan up and tried to sleep frequently wiping ourselves with a damp washer to cool us from the oven that was housed underneath our mosquito net.

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