Sept. 6th, 2013
The highlight from my first trip to Hampi was watching
sunrise at the Monkey Temple which is perched on a rocky hilltop a few
kilometres out of town...so it was something I wanted to do with Naomi this
time. We rented a small motorbike the
evening before and arose at 5am. We
began in the dark but the sky was getting lighter and as we passed through a
few small enclaves of houses and sheds clustered by the side of the road. A few of the locals were beginning their
morning chores of getting water, feeding cows or hacking out phlegm from the
back of their throats with maximum effort.
Arriving at the temple we were greeted by a cute three
legged dog named Hampi according to the chai and banana seller. We declined the chai but took a bunch of
bananas to feed some of the temple regulars, macaque monkeys, up on top. After 10 minutes of climbing the 4-500 steps
and we reached the top to be greeted by the chanting and drumming of the
worshippers from inside the white single storey temple. Most of them are young boys from the north of
India who typically spend 6 months to a year at the temple. They are supervised by 2-3 men who live there
as well.
We lucked out and witnessed a beautiful sunrise partially
surrounded by clouds. It would be the
last clear sunrise for the rest of our time in Hampi. By surprise, a young Israeli couple that we
met at the Rosh Hashanah dinner called Dror and Rotem arrived just in time to
catch the sun’s appearance.
The Monkey Temple:
The boys from the temple:
That's me in the background...contemplating life:
Enjoying the view with Naomi:
Now it was time to feed the monkeys! I put my backpack on my front with the
plastic bag of the small bananas inside.
I gave away 3-4 to different monkeys as Naomi snapped a few pics. Now it was her turn and she took the plastic
bag out of the backpack and almost immediately the largest, fattest,ugliest,
meanest looking of the bunch raced up beside her and began pulling at her baggy
pants, almost bringing them down. We
were both stupefied as the alpha male snatched the whole bag from her,
retreated about 5 feet and then set about feasting on his bounty as the rest of
us, humans and monkeys alike, watched helplessly. I tried my best attempted at scaring him and
proving that I was in fact the alpha here but he growled and bared his teeth
back and I heeded Naomi’s prudent advice to just let him have the fruit. No wonder he’s so fat!
The exchange...
The Alpha Male...fat and bad ass:
Everyone could only watch:
When he was finally done, this one hoped to find something left in the bag...
But he'd cleaned it out... :(
After an hour or so we descended, hopped back on the bike
and continued away from Hampi to a small village called Anegundi. It’s a quaint little place, once you can look
past the decrepid little houses with cows or goats sometimes occupying what
should be the front porch, or the odd smell wafting by, or the shit lying here
there and everywhere...dog shit, cow shit, human shit. I guess plumbing technology hasn’t quite
reached here yet. We slowly puttered
along the short and sometimes narrow streets as school kids prepared for school
in their cute uniforms. I stopped the
bike by a little temple where there was a sign for a “Community Place” with a
small path down to the river. We were
greeted by a cute but dusty little puppy but after a bit of love was exchanged
he didn’t follow us down the short trail...and we quickly found out why. I couldn’t help but remark to Naomi the
number of piles of excrement that was everywhere, primarily of the human type. I was amazed at the variety of colours and types;
you had the large logs, the coily and even the pancake...ay yai yai! Needless to say, we didn’t spend much time
there.
On the way down:
Yes, stopping to smell the flowers (after a pee in the bushes):
Great rock formations:
The rice paddies below with the odd random boulder:
Naomi caught this one perfectly! He couldn't have posed better by the statue on the gate at the bottom:
The chariot in the center of Anegundi:
The dusty puppy and perhaps his mom:
The entrance to the "Community Space":
Ah...puppy love!
Just as we reached the outskirts of the town, we ran out of
gas. Thankfully we only had to walk 400
meters back into town and by 1 litre of petrol from a plastic bottle from a
shop but we had hardly gone 4-5 kilometres and the bike was supposed to have at
least a litre in it already when we rented it (normally good for 30-40
kilometres) so the rental guy was going to hear about this. Refuelled, we headed north and within half a
kilometre we passed the only petrol station around, so we had at least run out
in a good spot. We explored the area,
going as far as the small city of Gangawadi and essentially the end of the amazing
rocky landscape.
Late in the afternoon, we decided to take advantage of
having our own transportation and biked out to and along the nearby manmade
lake used for irrigating the nearby countryside’s rice paddies. It was a beautiful ride and as we returned
back by the dam a man in a small round boat, called a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coracle>coracle
,
asked whether we wanted to go for a paddle.
I immediately dismissed it but luckily Naomi was interested so for 100
rupees each he took us for a little boat ride.
They’re funny looking little boats, like the cap of a huge mushroom
upside down. Obviously they don’t track
easily as there’s no keel or rudder but with some practice you can get them
going in a straight line. The cool thing
(well Naomi didn’t think so) was that man, could they spin! The old shirtless paddler got us spinning
around rapidly enough that Naomi’s stomach was disagreeing with the dizzying
motion and she quickly asked for him to stop.
He gave us each a try at paddling the boat with Naomi trying first
before we headed back to shore. As we
were about to get back on the bike, Dror and Rotem showed up on a big, proper
motorbike and we told them that they should go for a boat ride too, which they
did and thoroughly enjoyed.
We stopped at a small waterfall after we bumped into an Israeli man and his adult daughter from the Rosh Hashanah dinner:
The dam:
And how it makes the landscape below so luscious:
"Don't pay the ferryman!"
Naomi relaxing in the coracle:
It's not as comfy as it looks...and you get a bit of a wet bum...
Riding back to town:
Sometimes it’s the simple things in life...
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