Beautiful Hampi

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We left Varkala and started our 26 hour train journey in the morning. It wasn't bad at all. The landscape was amazing and we had really nice people around our seats. The train got busy at times but I often had my lower birth to myself. Ant spent most of the time sitting at the open door enjoying the landscape. We arrived in Guntakal, Karnataka at 10.30am the next day, earlier than expected which was a bit of a surprise to us. We decided to treat ourselves to a taxi to Hampi rather than having to wait 4 hours and then boarding another train for 3 hours. The 3 hours taxi ride was worse than the 26 hours on the train. The roads are awful here - some are paved but not very well, they have big potholes and loads of bumps. In addition to this our driver must have tried to save petrol and his top speed was 70kmh but most of the time we drove at 45-50kmh (yawn).

We eventually arrived in Hampi in the afternoon. What an amazing place. We heard a lot about it and we are very happy that we decided to come here. Hampi is a world heritage site and there are ruins scattered all around Hampi and the surrounding area. You can get around them by walking, cycling, rickshaw or on a motorobike. We hired a bike for a fews days and explored the area. We also walked around the ruins in Hampi itself which are pretty amazing.

As Ant is with me I don't get hassled too much but when I am on my own it's worse. He was sick one day and I walked around the ruins by myself. It was over lunchtime so not many people were around then because of the heat. This local guy came from nowhere and approached me. It's just harmles chit-chat but he then wanted to show me something at this temple and was going on and on about the kamasutra including detailed descriptions. I declined in a polite manner and went the opposite way. Mostly people just want to talk to you - they ask where you from and what your name is. Most of the kids just want sweats or pens. We bought loads of pens but they only lasted us for 30 mins because we stopped at a village and once we started giving them out we got mopped.

The place is very chilled and relaxed and we met loads of nice people here. We moved to a different guesthouse in a more quiet location overlooking a banana plantation and with nice views accross the river. We have access to a lovely spot on the river by cutting through the banana plantation (and jumping over a very dirty stream) and Ant spends some time fishing down there.

He was told to use bananas for fishing and we bought some yesterday. On the way home he got surrounded by cows who tried to eat the bananas. Once we got rid of them it was the kids and after that he got attacked by monkeys. He only managed to save 4 out of 12 bananas.

The place is full here with animals, cows, cats, dogs, sheep, goats and even krokodiles in the river - we haven't seen the latter. This morning this cow followed me through the gate to our gueshouse. The other day one swam across the river and walked out the other end like it's the most normal thing for a cow to do.

We are taking it easy today (for once) but we will go to the slothbear sanctuary 15km away and I will learn how to ride a bike, hurrah!

We are planning to leave here in 4 days which means we spent a total of 10 days in Hampi. I never thought I could stay this long in a place without a beach! Amazing. After here we are probably heading to Kanha for some tiger spotting and then Varanasi.

Sunny, hot and dusty greetings from Hampi!

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