Ok. The longer Hampi post... What was really striking about Hampi was that just a few hours on from the train journey, I find myself in some past life, Quantum Leap style. From Panaji, an Indian town that feels more like somewhere on the Med, to the India you see on travel documentaries - cows by the score, oxen-pulled carts, huge temples, crumbling buildings, and touts, touts, touts and then, for good measure, a few more touts. It is a very, very strange environment. Like stepping back 500 years. Or maybe like going to the Glastonbury Festival three months after its finished. Or, maybe, it's like visiting the former centrepiece of an incredibly wealthy and populous civilisation that has fallen into ruin, and slowly been recolonised by Hindu pilgrims, travellers, and the assorted stalls, travel agents
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