Magical Hampi

Hampi! Let me tell you a little bit about this magical place. It is somewhere everyone should visit while in India (look at me, I've been here 3 weeks and I'm already telling everyone what to do). But really, Hampi was pretty cool, I'm not lying. Go there. The entire place looks like that picture there on the right. It is pretty stunning landscape.

So I arrived in HYD on Wed night, and that very first weekend, headed off for a long voyage to Hampi. Selin had gotten us train tickets on the overnight train, departing from Hyd train station around 10 PM I think. Note: this was a while ago, and I'm just recanting the experience now, so details are going to be a bit hazy. So we finished a long Friday at work (know how in Mt. View, everybody stops working on Friday at 4 PM? Not the case in HYD. They work a lot of hours in HYD. I'm getting used to it, but it's a long workday. There was a TGIF though, so that was cool), headed home and got packed, and then our buddy Jaffer drove us to the train station. Big thank you to Jaffer as he didn't just drive us to the train station and take off, he parked, got out with us, and helped us out...much appreciated as we had no idea what we were doing, and the train station was a pretty confusing place. With Jaffer's help we got it worked out, our train pulled up (very slowly -- the train ALWAYS moved very slowly), and we got on board.

Our tickets were firstclass sleeper tickets, meaning we had beds to sleep in...sort of. But it's India, and things are different here. And it's a train! It's not a luxury hotel. (Side note about India: 'Clean' and 'cleanliness' have a whole different meaning here. You either learn to just adjust and deal with it, or you can spend the whole time being grossed out about everything. I think you can guess what I've decided to do). Anyways, the train accomodations were far from luxury, and Selin said she saw a cockroach crawling next to my head while I was sleeping (she was on the top bunk, I was bottom), and we had to share a compartment with 2 other people who had the beds next to ours, but it was fine. We got a little bit of sleep, and in the end we got where we were going. Well it did take a LONG time to get where we were going, like 14 hours or something, the trains are SLOW, but we made it.
That's a rickshaw there on the right. The driver was taking a nap.

Once we got off the train, we caught a rickshaw for the 20 minute or so ride to the little town of Hampi. This was my first rickshaw ride in India, and it was pretty cool. Rickshaws (technically, auto rickshaws) are these little 3 wheel contraptions that are all over the place here in India. You can read about them on that Wikipedia link, but they really are everywhere, and I have seen some pretty crazy rickshaw transport setups -- it's no joke you will sometimes see 8 people in a rickshaw. How that rickshaw manages to move with 8 people piled into it I do not know, but apparently there is more power in that little lawnmower engine than one would think. So we cruised in the rickshaw to Hampi. It cost us I don't remember how many rupees, but I think we paid more than we had to, but it's still only like $5.

Wow, I've been rambling on for paragraphs here and I haven't even GOTTEN us to Hampi yet. Somebody stop me! Fast typing, no editing, and my very own blog -- this is what you get. I didn't intend to write this much because I also want to write some more about Mamallapuram, but maybe I'll just include pictures of that or something, you already heard about the surf there. Back to Hampi!

We had arranged beforehand our lodging in a tiny little guesthouse called Rama guest house which is in the tiny little town, by the river. Guess how much this guest house costs? $15? That'd be pretty cheap, right, but that'd be wrong because it only cost 200 rupees per night, which is a little more than $4. That is total, not per person. Craziness. I mean for $4 !!! jeez. That is hard to fathom that $4 gets you a room to sleep in. Apparently $4 does not include clean sheets, which we found out, and that was not ideal, but again it was $4? are you serious? $4? No hot water either for $4. But it was a room with a lock and a toilet and a shower and it cost $4. In the end, we actually wound up spending the night on the other side of the river as we were over there and found a nicer place to lay our heads for about $20 with clean sheets and everything, but we kept our $4 room anyways and used it as a storage locker/emergency bathroom/emergency first aid station/emergency shower...and it was perfect for that. A great little place.

After checking into our $4 room, we set out to explore. We had the whole day ahead of us pretty much, which was excellent, as the train ride had taken all night. First thing on the agenda: get a scooter. Our 3 housemates here in HYD (all blokes from the Dublin office, Paul (Scottish I think), Rob (Irish), and Stefan (English)) had been to Hampi the weekend before (they actually discovered the $4 Rama Guest House) and said they hired a scooter for really cheap.

Me and Selin, riding our scooter. Extreme nose shot close up. This picture always makes me laugh. Selin looks like she's having a good ol' time back there...what a cutie.

As I love riding around on scooters (Joel can attest to that, remember our scooter in Italy? And of course your red rocket in Honolulu too, haha good times on scooters) I was very much looking forward to that. Also, driving in Hampi was way different than HYD, it's a little tiny town so it's much easier and less scary -- everything is slow and there's not cars and traffic EVERYWHERE going in every direction. All that...and the fact that the scooter cost 150 rupees for the entire day (and all night!). Yes that is even less than the $4 hotel room, that's about $3.50. So we walked up to a scooter place, told the guy my name, I don't think he even asked for any ID or anything, gave him 150 rupees plus another 60 for a liter of petrol (he probably made out like a bandit on the petrol, but whatever, who cares?) and we were off on our way. I was driver, Selin navigating from behind.

We set off to get some food at another recommended place, the Mango Tree restaurant, which was fantastic (and also cheap). It is this little place just outside of town where u sit outside underneath this huge Mango tree and it overlooks the river that flows thru Hampi. It has a fabulous ambiance. And also really really good mango porridge. We filled our bellies and headed to cruise the wide open streets and some ruins...of which there is no shortage. We didn't really have a set agenda for the day, which was nice, so we just sort of cruised, we knew we had all day tomorrow to see the main spots we wanted to be sure to see, so we had plenty of time.

I won't bother with trying to give you the names or details on all the ruins we saw, because I don't remember the names, but I remember the experience. It was awesome. The ruins are cool, and you can go wherever you want -- they recognize the ruins are cool because they charge us foreigners $5 USD to see certain ones of em, but they haven't started preserving them like you and I are used to. Roped off areas don't exist. You go wherever you please, touch whatever you want. Which makes it all pretty cool. And in addition to the ruins, just the landscape of Hampi is pretty incredible in and of itself. There are rocks everywhere you look for as far as your eye can see. It is a hilly, green, tropical almost looking landscape just covered in these great big boulders, everywhere. It's pretty stunning, and was fun just driving through that landscape. You'll have to see all the pictures to really get a better idea of it.

It's almost bedtime, so I'm going to have to give the truncated version of the rest of our Hampi adventure...but you should get the picture by now. It's a small little place, amazing things to see, nice getaway from the bustling cities, a really enjoyable and memorable trip.

The rest of the trip will be conveyed in pictures...but it was awesome. A good time, a great weekend, an excellent introduction to India for my first weekend here. Who needs sleep when you've got ruins to explore? (and scooters to ride!).

After touring the rest of the ruins, hanging out, doing some bargain shopping, eating a DELICIOUS pizza on Sunday night (food is hit or miss here. Unless you order something Indian, it's a crapshoot what you're going to actually end up with -- I had a pizza before that one that was unlike any pizza I've ever seen before...), we took another rickshaw to the train station, boarded our sleeper train, and settled in for the 14 hour trek back to HYD, and back to the office -- we went straight to work from the train station Monday morning.




King of Hampi