There and back again

We got a sleeper bus from Goa to Hampi which was 10 hours of torture. It made the train jouney seem like a night of luxury in comparison!

There was a combination of normal chairs, chairs that reclined and manouvered themselves into some sort of flatish bed and flat beds on the upper berth. We were allocated the flat beds although going by what others said I don’t think there an option that allowed you to get any sleep. The maniac driving the bus liked going round corners at high speed (typical of our experience of Indian driving so far) which sent us rolling round the bed and didn’t lend itself to sleeping. Whenever he braked (which was usually quite hard) there was nothing to stop us sliding forwards and banging our heads off the partition. We arrived in Hampi with headaches and motion sickness and had to spend our first day in bed recovering.

Hampi is another UNESCO world heritage site and is a strange little place. It is surrounded on all sides by masses of huge boulders piled up which made it feel like being in the middle of a quarry just with bigger rocks. It’s a very strange unique landscape and apparently not man made. It also has some very impressive temples which we managed to see after recooperating. We hired a guide to show us the main temple who particularly liked pointing out the karma sutra symbols.

Hampi has become a centre for backpackers to hang out and stare at rocks (?) and supposedly people like to stay a while. We have found that in such tourist centers the food is usually toned down for the tourist palette and there is a higher concentration of beggers and con men all of which made us reluctant to spend too much time there. Although they advertise as being a safe area, tourists are encouraged to register at the local police station leaving your name, passport & visa no and the make and model of your camera. There was a also a “wall of shame” which featured two young drealocked tourists who were jailed in 1988 for possession of cannabis which a local went to great lenghts to tell us about. I had to ask him if they were still in jail but apparently they were sent home years ago. But they are still remembered in Hampi. They didn’t sell any beer in Hampi either so that topped it for us and sent us to our next destination, Bangalore.

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