The India Chapter: Curry In A Hurry: Hampi

The last week has been full of wonderful experiences. Last Wednesday was Eid, a muslim celebration marking the end of Ramadan, and later that evening after the celebrations we boarded an overnight bus to Hampi in the State of Karnataka to spend 4 days exploring. I will leave my Eid experience for a separate post, as the wonderfulness of Hampi will require a long post.

I remember reading about Hampi back in the Winter as I researched places in Southern India that would be worth a visit. After reading about it online, it was definitely on the top of my list of things to do during my time here.

Before getting to the bearing my love for Hampi, it is worth mentioning the hell we went through getting to there. Our "12 hour" bus ride ended up consisting of 3 bus changes, 26 hours in transit, and one car accident. Our bus ended up rear-ending a car a few hours outside Pune causing some substantial damage to the vehicle, and of course the driver of our bus had no insurance, so we waited at least 2 hours for the police to come. After they never showed we went to some kind of hotel and restaurant, where we drank chai and ate Pohe while we waited about 3 hours for a new bus to come pick us up. When all was said and done, we arrive around 10:30pm on Thursday, instead of our original arrival time of around 9am.

The ruins of Vijayanagra located in and around Hampi date back to the Hindu Vijayanagra Dynasty which lasted from the early 1300's until 1565, when it was overtaken by the Muslim Confederacy. At it's peak, due to its excellent location it was one of the most fortified areas of the entire empire, that covered much of the south. It was easy to see why, because there were literally thousands of gigantic boulders everywhere on each hill and valley throughout the surrounding area of Hampi. I'm still not quite sure if they were naturally there and weather worn, placed there, or a combinations of the two.

The sheer size of the ruins in terms of distance was one of the highlights of the trip for me. We decided to rent motorbikes to cruise around the area as most of the ruins were spread out over 30-40 kilometers. Driving the bikes on some of the dirt paths next to the giant rocks, banana trees and various ruins was one of the most amazing experiences so far. The pictures taken don't even come close to portraying how impressive the vastness of the landscape is. It was mind blowing that I could drive for 20 minutes on a dirt road away from the main temples and ruins, get off the bike an walk up a bunch of boulders and then stumble upon more small temples hundreds of years old in the middle of nowhere. If this site were in Europe, it would be flooded with tourists and would definitely not be such a unique place. Honestly, it amazes me that more people do not come to Hampi, I know when most people think India this area is not what comes to mind. However, it was one of the most unique and fascinating places I have seen.

One morning we decided to get up early to see the sunrise at the top of Matanga Hill, but unfortunately when we reached the top it was extremely cloudy and did not get to see it. The view from the top in itself was worth the trek up though, especially scaling some of the rocks up the path to the top with nothing but a headlight guiding the way.

Another amazing moment was on our last night in Hampi, on the way back from exploring we ran into a procession for the Ganesh Festival (sidenote: Ganesh is the Hindu God of wisdom and prosperity and the festival is biggest in Maharashtra, especially Pune and Mumbai. The festival is 10 days, so I look forward to catching it in Pune over the next few days) The traditions involves bringing the Ganesh across town and at the end spraying water on Ganesh and then floating it down the river. It was amazing to hear the drums and people dancing all the way through the bazaar until finally sending Ganesh down the river. On the way down the bazaar a little girl came up to me with a big smile and both arms out straight. I thought she wanted to dance with me, but she started to grab my hands and run in a circle, so I started to twirl her around in the air as we marched down the road with the group. She was extremely happy and we did this two or three times before she ran back to her mom at the side. It was incredibly cute!

The bus ride back was only 14 hours, but was not without excitement. In the middle of the night, an argument started between a passenger boarding in Bijapur and a man claiming to have the right to a window seat. After some insults back and forth the one man ran to the back near where we were and started fighting, yelling and punching the man near the window. This woke the entire bus up and delayed the bus by 30 min or so, but it could have been worse if the police had gotten involved.

Once we arrived in Pune, we heard the bus driver shout Swargate which is an area near our flat. Half asleep we hurried and grabbed our bags and hopped out of the bus. As soon as the bus pulled away we realized we have made a huge mistake, and were in Swargate District, which is over an hour outside Pune, rather than Swargate station in the City Centre. This whole situation was almost identical to another travel failure when Erin and I were travelling in Ghana, and realized there were 4 Tema stations in Accra. After a hard negotiations we finally made it home after a long rickshaw ride.

Overall it was a fantastic weekend, and I highly recommend anyone traveling to India to check out Hampi, it is truly an amazing place and the pictures below barely capture it's incredible landscape. I hope to upload some more pictures that the other OMG'ers have been taking in the next few days as well.