Hampi Happiness

Sept. 6^th, 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.

Good Morning Hampi!

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...

Goan Out for a Little While

Sept. 2^nd-Sept. 5^th, 2013

As she’s done the past couple of years in September, Naomi returned from Israel for another Indian holiday.  I met her at Dabolim airport and we headed a bit south to Colva Beach for one night.  Colva is near the Margao train station and the following day we were to catch an early morning train to Hampi for a week.  Naomi made a reservation for us in a “fancy” hotel (read: $40/night!  Lots in this neck of the woods.) and I was treated to my first hot shower in over a year!  The room was spacious with a couch and a comfy bed but we thought it a bit odd that there was a monolithic old school TV in the middle of the room facing the bed.  If you sat on the couch located on the opposite side of the room, you had a beautiful view of the massive black plastic backside of the television....oh India, will you ever learn about interior design?!?

We boarded the train the next morning and within an hour we passed the highlight of the ride, Dudhsagar Falls.  Since the monsoon is just finishing, the waterfalls were running at full power and the jungle was super lush.

All Aboard!

Naomi checking out our 2nd class A/C cabin:

Lunch...not so yummy, cold but super spicy:

Dudhsagar Falls from the opposite hillside:

Dudhsagar Falls close up:

These two nice, middle class Indian fellows somehow spoke incessantly for the first 5+ hours of the trip...non-stop!

Arriving in Hospet, we took a rickshaw for the 14 kilometres to Hampi for 200 rupees.  We could have gotten it a bit cheaper but our driver named Coffee was a decent guy and the poor guy got a flat tire just a few hundred meters before we arrived.  We crossed the river in the small but full boat and headed to Mowgli Guesthouse that we had researched online but there weren’t any rooms available the first night so we opted for a cheaper place called Nargila (which means a hookah or water pipe in Hebrew).  The food was decent there but our 300 rupee room left something to be desired.  The thatched roof of the little hut didn’t provide much soundproofing and allowed many bugs inside (most of which thought that Naomi was the tastier of the two of us).  The mattress seemed to be made of straw and the best part was that the communal Indian style toilet for the restaurant was right next door, a couple of feet from our bed, so we woke up in the morning to the lovely sounds of the staff carrying out their daily business!  Lovely way to wake up...  Poor Naomi was ready to leave Hampi already as she’d been travelling for most of the past couple of days and hadn’t quite mentally landed in India yet.  Luckily we were able to get a room at Mowgli’s, at more than double the price (700 roops) but it was totally worth it and Naomi grew to love Hampi.

Rickshawing through ugly and smelly Hospet:

They can fit up to two motorbikes in this tiny boat if they want to:

Our new room at Mowgli:

The nearby neighbourhood:

And one of our neighbours:

I snuck a photo in of these two cute girls:

But then only one agreed to a portrait when I asked:

Thanks to my friend Robin, I've gotten into pictures of goats:

The second day we were in Hampi was the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah which is the start of the new year in their calendar.  There is a Chabad House (a Jewish house) in Hampi just a few hundred meters from the Nargila Restaurant.  Naomi inquired with the young Rabbi and we were invited to join their Rosh Hashanah dinner.  We were the first to arrive just before sunset (when the New Year begins) but later the table swelled to about 20 people.  Two years ago I attended my first Rosh Hashanah dinner with Naomi in Palolem but this time was definitely a more religious affair.  During one section, the women left the men (really they just sat behind a dividing curtain at the end of the long covered gazebo) while the men read some prayers.  I couldn’t understand the Hebrew chants but occasionally the thoughtful Rabbi told me in English the essence of what was being said.  The dinner consists of many little courses, many of which represent something such as the hope for prosperity in the coming year.  Near the end, everyone took their turn to say something, be it a wish, a positive thought or some kind of piece of wisdom for the New Year which I thought was a nice idea.  I appreciated the openness of this community and it would turn out that over the next couple of weeks we would spend some time with some of our new friends from this dinner.

The Rabbi and his young family:

Rosh Hashanah dinner:

Every morning the one resident elephant of the main temple in town is paraded down to the riverside for her bath.  We lucked out and arrived at the little ferry boat just as she was walking down the concrete steps on the other side of the river.  Only 10 or so other tourists were hanging about watching the handler scrub Laxmi who was lying on her side in the water.  “Anybody want to help washing her?” a local guy in his mid-twenties with a lazy eye standing in the river with his toothbrush asked, he seemed to be performing is daily hygienic routine at the same time as the elephant.  Sure, why not, so I jumped in and the handler passed me a flat stone and told me just to scrub away.  This must be Laxmi’s favourite time of the day as she was very relaxed.  Naomi took a turn too and then Laxmi stood up and gave herself a rinsing off with her built-in hose.  The handler barked out a command.  Laxmi bent one of her front legs and the handler was lifted up onto her back and they began to walk back to the temple.  Many people, including locals, were giving her small amounts of money which she gladly accepted with her trunk, gave to the handler and then put her trunk on the donor’s head for a blessing.  We gave her 100 rupees in thanks for letting us help in the bathing process and we received 3 long blessings each...super cool.

Laxmi walking down for her bath:

Scrub-a-dub-dub:

 Anyone in there?

A baba getting blessed by the pachyderm:

The self-rinsing system:

Naomi feeding her some bananas:

We ate breakfast at the Mango Tree restaurant on the advice of some other foreigners we met.  All meals are served on a banana leaf on a plate and the food was decent and nice staff.  We inquired with the waiter about getting a guide for a temple tour and before we’d even finished eating we had a guy waiting for us.  Kumar is a local and is a certified tour guide (by the tourism department of Karnataka).  We proceeded to go for a 2-3 hour walking tour of the Achyutaraya Temple and a few other sites nearby.  I hiked around this area when I was in Hampi a couple of years ago but I had no idea what I was looking at and Kumar was very informative so I was glad we had forked out 600 rupees for his services as he made the walk much more interesting.  Regardless however, it didn’t take too long before Naomi and I were “templed out” but we agreed that we would call Kumar in a few days to take a rickshaw temple tour to some other spots that I had not visited last time.

Time to let some pictures finish off this entry...

The start of the walking tour:

Kumar, tour guide extraordinaire: 

Looking down at the temple compound:

Me in the Matrix...Naomi took a panoramic shot while I phased in and out of existence:

Naomi soaking in the information...the test will be at the end:

A beautiful water reservoir:

Super large centipede: 

Looking back to the main temple in town: 

Templing's tough!

Goat's coming home:

Naomi pulling her Middle Eastern look:

The King's Scale (and some idiot under it):

This banyan tree has thousands of pieces of cloth tied to it.  Couples tie something to the tree in hopes of soon having a baby:

Naomi tied something on for a friend of hers:

A traffic jam on the path back:

Such a cute monkey baby:

This family from Andhra Pradesh wanted a pit with me:

There's a tall wooden chariot in town by the main temple and most of the time it is covered by corrugated sheet metal...and it sure makes a nice home for monkeys:

Some new buddies, young sticker and postcard seller Babu and the waiter at Nargila Ujjal:

The monolithic Ganesha:

For some perspective of size: