Saturday in Hampi (part one)

We arrived early in the morning to the dusty orange dawn of Hampi, the conductor jarring us rudely awake at half past six, demanding our blankets and pillows and god knows what else. I packed up my stuff in a bleary-eyed stupor and sipped a tiny plastic cup of oversugared chai.

We disembarked at the Hospet train station, and found the rickshaw drivers dispatched from Vicky's Guest House in Hampi. They guided us to our rickshaws through a crowd of over-stimulated children (and adults) slinging colors at each other with special attention to foreigners - Holi had begun. We managed to escape being transformed into technicolor abominations and sped off through town.

Hospet is what you think of when you think of rural India: grade A quality squalor, kids leading water buffalos through fetid rivers of shit and trash, chickens picking in dust heaps, herds of pigs rooting up against the corners of cement lined huts. It was drizzling in a half-hearted sort of way when we arrived and everything looked muddy and dreary and damp - I was glad I had my pashmina.

Hampi proper is located about 40 KM out of Hospet, among a dramatic boulder field set among tropical banana plantations and rice paddies. As we approached through the banana trees, we could already see the foliage-shrouded remains of temples and columns, advance emissaries of the ruins we were about to see. We passed quickly by the Ganesh temple, the idol drying off slightly as the rain slacked off, rounding the hill.

We splashed through the mud into Hampi, which is definitely nothing much to look at - a series of flimsy tourist geared structures set among a particularly unattractive and gloppy stretch of mud road. But the magnifencet heights of the Virupaksha temple rise impressively above the glop, evoking instant thoughts of Indiana Jones and various tacky adventure movies - we had arrived.

Vicky's Guest House was also not much to look at, located along a particularly squashy stretch of road. The rooms were somewhat clean and that is about all that could be said for them, as a faint aroma of mildew percolated up into the air as we opened the door. No AC and no hot water, of course...you think this is the goddamn Ritz?

I was feeling antisocial and in a hurry to see the ruins, so I bid the others farewell as they peered with bleary eyes into their first cups of coffee at the upstairs restaurant. I walked up the main street of the bazaar and headed through towards the river, picking my way along a path studded with boulders and banana trees, perking up slightly in the morning sun. Holi had turned out the locals, and groups of jubilant young men carrying beer walked past me, readying themselves for the inevitable technicolor battle to come. A guide accompanying a Western tourist took me aside and warned me: "You should really try to be back by one or two to Hampi, you know..these guys are gonna get drunk and rowdy." I decided to take that to heart.

I passed through a hole in the boulders, ambling past a couple of begging sadhus or solitary holy men (how holy, I guess, if angling for donations), groups of already-drunk people banging their laundry against rocks and having a grand old time, yelling god knows what at me as I passed on through. I rounded a corner and found myself almost alone amongst the ruins, on the trail to Vittala Temple.

I really find it difficult to express how downright cool it was to have such open access to these ruins, especially ruins of this caliber and this scale. In the USA and Europe, historical remains like this would be fenced off and curated by guides - here, no one is keeping an eye over your shoulder or advising you to avoid touching anything. I know this is probably contributing to the degradation of the ruins in one way or another, but part of the appeal of Hampi is that it is still alive, that people go about their standard lives and do their laundry and drive their goats in and amongst monolithic statues and gorgeous, graceful temples - it has not yet been rendered sterile.

So I spent a happy time looking at the curious carvings on the rock floor (hands and feet and women), Shivas and Garuda's staring up through half-collapsed rock panels, tablets bearing incomprehensible writing jutting up through the sand and scrubby dry-weather foliage. Hampi is a renowned bouldering area (among its other strong points), and I found myself a particularly big set of rocks to clamber up, finding a small cavern in the rocks to shade myself (and avoid the various packs of all too curious Indians on holiday from asking me for "one snap with you please!").

I sat up there for a few hours, watching the world go by, groups of young men roaring into the little sanctum by the river with beer, pelting each other with colors and playing Bollywood music at ear-shattering volumes among the quiet splendor of the King's Balance and collapsed columns. Huge families wandered through, little girls and women dressed in luminescent saris, waving at me and yelling for me to come down (I politely declined.) Little lizard-like chipmunks regarded me momentarily then went about their business, vying for rock space with big monitor lizards in yellows and greens, and gorgeous emerald tropical starlings, darting in and out of the cactus plants. It was entirely possible to watch the river go by forever, watching partiers dip into the water and birds take dust baths in the rockyard below - but as always, I was getting hungry, and I slithered down from the rock pile before anyone noticed me.

I was thumping earnestly up the path back to the village when I heard a curious hissing sound and saw, to my profound surprise, a cobra of healthy and respectable size slither out from under my feet and beneath a rock. I know that they are More Scared of You then You Are Of Them or some bullshit like that, but I still stood there in stunned silence for a minute or two. Welcome to India.

Cheerily reminded of my own mortality, I found myself a rooftop restaurant and ate aloo palak (spinach with potato) and kimchi (really) in contemplative silence. I was mostly just glad I had been wearing cowboy boots at the time.