thursday

The weather is getting hotter. Bangaloreites swear up and down that the monsoon shouldn't be here yet, but it sure as heck has been raining a lot. (One has to remember to bring an umbrella, which has never been a talent of mine.) We managed to avoid getting rained on on the way to work.

It was Kishor's birthday and along those lines, he decided he was gonna take us out for lunch to the Hyderabadi Biryani place. Biryani is a delicious sort of rice casserole dish for those unaware, and apparently the biryani that comes from Hyderabad is especially delicious. We proceeded to order mutton and chicken biryani, chili chicken, butter chicken and lots of rotis. Then we stuffed ourselves silly. Meat gets downright delicious when cooked biryani style - tender and juicy as anything. Drool.

I needed to get back fast since I had to do an interview. (Ooh, I feel all professional!) Went back on the back of Madan's bike since that would be faster. I have to say, I know they're incredibly deadly, but I love riding around on the back of a motorbike here in India. Instead of getting jostled around (and cheated) in a rickshaw or waiting two million years in traffic in a car, you can just....go. Wherever the hell you want. Whenever.

I was, surprisingly, permitted to do an interview with someone Actually Famous: Renee, an up and coming Hindi pop star, and David Anthony, her USA producer who has handled such luminaries as, uh, Janet Jackson and the Backstreet Boys. I have never conducted a real official interview before, which meant I had to quickly figure out how to use the dang recording device quickly. However, I think it went okay: I took the precaution of drawing up my questions beforehand. Renee was authentically intelligent and charming, and it was actually a pleasure to discuss her interest in fusion Hindi music. Her music is quite good - I listened to it on her Myspace page - and their mission is to introduce Hindi music to dance clubs in the USA and the UK. I wish them luck. Few things are more fun to dance to then really good silly Hindi music.

I finished up the interview, then headed on home to take a sorely needed nap. Naps unfortunately are hard to get in India, mainly because the time around 4:00 is the time the neighbors decide to watch Bollywood movies at earsplitting volumes. While their dog barks. Thank God for ear plugs.

We managed to rally the troops at a somewhat decent hour (never easy to do), then headed off for Tandoor, a nice place on MG. Road. The restaurant had a pleasant Raj-Era ambience, with overdressed waiters and the inevitable open tandoori kitchen, featuring young guys in white chef's outfits skewering delicious, delicious meat onto big metal skewers. (This is fun to watch.)

The others ordered some terrifying cocktails, which I abstained from. I do not like my liquor adulterated with fruit juice and food coloring. Aneesa and I conspired as usual on the food, choosing stuffed tandoori peppers and an interesting sounding kebab composed of ground lamb wrapped around chicken. The stuffed peppers were delicious, with a paneer, mixed nut, pomegranate seed and onion filling and given a nice hit in the oven. The meat was delicious and rich as well, although I do find the notion of combining two different animals into one dish to be a big....wrong somehow. Maybe I should get over it.

I also tried some delicious chicken tikka (just chunks of tandoori chicken) and some awesome tandoor gobi (cauliflower.) For some reason, cauliflower given the tandoori treatment and marinated in a bit of yogurt transforms a usually unassuming and pale vegetable into something akin to crack. Magic.

I was kind of a tool and tried to rush the bill because I wanted to go to a club and it was already past 10:00 - and as you may recall, everything closes in Bangalore at 11:30 or the morality police get kerflumpt. Unfortunately, the (rather pricy, but in my opinion worth it) bill took its time arriving. We made a general decision not to bother spending 20 extremely rushed minutes in the club, and decided to purchase some booze-likker from the sketchy bar on Thippasandra. Which we did. I curiously lost the urge to drink and rounded out the evening sitting on the roof listening to music, which is always nice.

wednesday

I have been too good lately maybe. (How can I help that?)

Went to work per usual. More writing. I decided to take a stroll down to Konark, a new vegetarian restaurant up the road. It was very nice and contemporary inside, and the menu was extensive, featuring just about every vegetable themed Indian dish known to man (And a few Chinese and Western ones to really round things out.) The place was full of business men chatting over lunch, tucking into epic portions of naan and spicy curries, gesturing at each other over glasses of tea.

I went with a tasty dish of palak mutter (spinach with peas) and a green salad. The waiter was absolutely aghast when I ordered no naan or roti - I am beginning to believe Indian waiters receive some sort of naan commission. Either that or Indians simply have a deep emotional need to get people to eat their complex carbohydrates.

I headed back around four, but the rain began coming down again, ruining my brilliant plan to go for a nice invigorating walk around the block. I sat around and was pissed off at the universe in general in protest. Food was concerning Indian-Chinese food. Indians and Americans are really quite equally good at messing up Chinese food.


I wanted to GO OUT DAMMIT and managed to recruit Aneesa, Carly and Adam to carry out my evil plans. However, Lorraine got us all trying to figure out how to make balloon animals (she's doing an event for the children at the school she volunteers at), and by the time we determined we were never, ever going to be able to survive as balloon animal makers, it was ten. Bangalore's biggest flaw is that everything absolutely poselutely must be closed at 11:30, so we jetted over to Zero G in a rickshaw (of course we couldn't find it initally.)

The door man let us girls in free, but charged Adam 500 cover charge. This could be used for drinks, but considering we had about an hour and a half to use it all, this meant hitting the likker pretty ardently and passionately.

I loved the place, however. Zero G is on the top of a large office building, and the dance floor and bar are open air, featuring lots of chrome accents and sparkly lights. It was Bollywood night and the music was fantastic, and I threw myself onto the dance floor, immediately getting some sympathetic Indian guys to teach me some Hindi dance moves. (I love jumping into the air and chanting OM SHANTHI OM when that song comes on. People who have done any clubbing in India know exactly what I mean.)

The others weren't up for dancing, so in disgust, I worked up the nerve to talk to an attractive guy I noticed lounging in the corner and looking bored. To my suprise, he was willing enough to talk to me - apparently he had to act nice because he was here with all the Big Important Guys from his IT company - and we chatted for a while. He was even kind enough to buy me some whiskey that wasn't swill, which was a nice change from the 35 rupee Old Monk I usually content myself with.

Unfortunately, the rain began pissing down - no other word for it - and the rickshaw back was almost unpardonably damp. We were pleasantly suprised at the aquatic abilities of your garden variety rickshaw though - the driver cut it through the foot and a half deep water with skill and talent. So we didn't fall in a pothole and drown after all.

tuesday

Woke up to what looked to be a sunny day. (Relief!)


We decided to visit the South Indian canteen down the street for lunch, a scrum of business-shirt attitred men yelling out orders for dosas and thalis and chaat at rock bottom prices. There's no seating of course, and everyone stands around munching and arguing, downing endless fruit juices. Aneesa and I shared a masala dosa, a kind of spicy rice flour pancake filled with tumeric-flavored mashed potato and onion. I also got to try some of the thali, which for a mere 20 rupees provided tons of food, including a delicious okra curry, spicy papadums, sambar, pickles, and some tart yogurt. Excellent.

It was fun to watch the guys in the kitchen throw together food, feverishly turning out dosas from a hot grill, spooning out curries and sambar, yelling at each other but one way or another getting it all together. It's admirable.

Adam began to succumb to one of those unfortunate Indian digestive episodes, so I accompanied him back on the rickshaw. I can only imagine that riding in a rickshaw when you really want to barf is not among life's best experiences. (it was also thinking about raining, which indicates that the universe was not feeling so friendly at that juncture.)

It was raining, no one else was around, and Adam of necessity needed to go lie down in the dark and try not to die, so I spent the evening watching TV and drawing weird cartoons.

This went on until Aneesa returned. We went to the Breeze for dinner - an over buttery vegetable curry and a nice spicy lamb curry dish - and talked. She's going to Mumbai in a week and I'm having such a good time that I want to stay on. I may change my flights and go down to Mumbai instead of returning home. I've always dreamed of seeing Mumbai - land of Bollywood and endless, blissful phel puri vendors by the ocean - and this would be a perfect opportunity to do so. (I also remember how Salman Rushdie portrayed Bombay in Midnight's Children - a decadent, bizarre metropolis with weirdness apparently coming out of the dysfunctional sewer system itself - and I want to see if it lives up to even a portion of that.) We shall see.

Claire, Pipa, Lorraine and Jimmy reappeared after Aneesa went to bed bearing beer from the profoundly skanky Night Boozer bar down Thippasandra road, and we stayed up for a while, drinking crap whiskey and laughing about things, listening to the rain come on down.

monday

Monday was not as good as Sunday, but I do not know how one could really begin to equal that, so I am not so disappointed. We went off to work per usual. We were all utterly exhausted from the not-so-restful bus journey and nodded off peacefully in the rickshaw- difficult to do considering that rickshaw journeys are rarely peaceful and therapeutic experiences.

The weather was looking ominous - I hate and despise the monsoon. I finished up the world music page. I will someday attend the Rain-forest World Music festival.

I rather desperately wanted to catch up on my sleep, so I left work fairly early and went home to crash. Dinner was rather dismal, but I was too exhausted to really care. The thunderstorm broke, viciously, and I sat around alone for a while at the Villa, hoping the power wouldn't go out.

Adam and Jimmy both got back late on account of horrible flooding rain, and I accompanied them to the Breeze restaurant to get a late dinner. It was a nice enough place but very brightly lit, and we could tell the server was not particularly thrilled to see us. Jimmy's strawberry milkshake was a slightly pornographic pink. We bought some adult beverages at the market down the street and retreated to the villa to watch bad movies - Dean Kootnz's "Phantoms" is a profoundly bad movie, a modern bad movie classic - and then we went to bed. All I could manage really.

sunday

Easter.

My Easters have been strange and disjointed for years on end, always spent in transit. This one was no different.

We woke up to another day of driving, miserable rain, thwacking against the loose screen door that held out the moldy air. We tromped miserably up the uncovered stairs to the rooftop restaurant - breakfasted on fruit salad and pancakes that were really crepes, sipping hot tea and watching the rain beat down on the soaring temple outside. (how much rain had fallen there over the years, how much more could it take ...? more then us?)

However, the others were determined to see it all - why the hell else linger through a long train journey on sticky blue mats anyway - and the oppurtunistic rickshaw driver permanantly employed by Vicky's offered us a full-day rickshaw tour at a very reasonable price. We accepted - why the hell not - and piled squishily into the rickshaws, jetting out across the muddy ground to the temple complexes.

We went many places that day, but one that sticks out was the Underwater Temple, lurking in a marshy bit of ground, recently excavated or something. Standing water has permeated it, sloshing around the abandoned pillars and languid Shiva sculptures, and tourists shed their socks and sandals and wade on in, laughter reverberating through the corridors. I had met a sweet brown and white dog earlier at the rocks and she had followed us in the rickshaw, loping grimily behind our vehicle. We rejoined each other in the temple. I was in one of those states I get into sometime where I am punchdrunk on existence mostly, and I chased the dog round and round the temple, splashing through water-lily and clover. The dog and I watched the fish nip at the other tourists heels as they peered into the inner sanctum, peered at some unexpected crabs, ducked from the (non-vampiric) bats that inhabited the walls and corridors.

We ran into a pack of grinning Indian boys who took to me immediately. They were all wearing cowboy hats for some irrational reason - they were on vacation from Hyderabad - and they plopped a hat on my head and posed for pictures, my arm around the damp dog, smiling like an idiot for once for photos because I was so curiously happy.

(Aneesa has one of those - I hate photos of myself but I will take that one at least, keep it in my drawers, look at it again someday and hope the dog has lived a long and happy life, hope the cowboy hat boys did well in their glorious banking careers, hope that the fish have persisted against the dual threats of tourism and over-feeding - hope against hope, I guess. Maybe I will frame it. My hair was not however brushed.)

In any case, we piled back into the rickshaws and drove to the Lotus Temple and Elephant Stables, sitting on a ridge up against the hill. The Lotus Temple was a graceful pink pavilion, decked out like an elaborate doiley, and one could easily imagine beautiful women lounging upon it and eating fruit -

I was not particularly beautiful but I lounged there too, watching a group of women in brilliant saris pluck the grounds and tease each other. The umbrella I borrowed was dysfunctional and I fiddled with it futiley until one of the local workmen ambled over with his own umbrella, smiling ear to ear. "Mine doesn't work," I offered, abashed, and he took it from me and repaired it. "Can we trade?," I asked, and he laughed in my face. He knew a bad deal when I saw it, me and my forlorn umbrella. The dog and I and the umbrella looked out to the elephant stables - big as you might expect them to be - and watched green parakeets fight in the trees outside them.

We managed to split ourselves up into two groups, foolishly, which meant Lorraine, Chris and I spent a few disturbing hours trying to find out if the others had been sold into sex slavery. They had not been, but we did get to see the Ramayana Temple, full of stone carvings depicting every last event in that long and winding story - I cannot say I knew what it meant, but it was a graphic novel in building format and I suppose that is cool enough.

We broke for lunch at the Mango Tree, a tropical oasis of a restaurant - no other word for it. You stop your rickshaw at the gate and walk down a lovely path through swampy, neon-green grass and lazing banana trees, past the river full of tan rocks and edged by rice paddies, stray dogs chasing each other through the rushes. The restaurant itself is a relaxed collection of straw-grass huts and benches, and you sit down and watch the water go by, eating spicy vegetarian curries off waxy green leaves, sipping fresh squeezed fruit juices. Aneesa and I shared a thali, a South Indian mixed lunch of curries and rices and crisp hot papadums, putting away more food then we could ever have anticipated, tickling the bellies of the resident housecats. We could have stayed there for hours or days or years, but we could not be such bad and terrible tourists.

The tour continued - we saw the Queen's Bath, the luxurious pleasure chamber constructed for noblewomen, formally fed by spring water and deep as anything. It stands in an area that must once have been a lovely garden, and you can easily imagine lying there half-submerged in the fresh water and smelling the jasmine flowers, totally content in Having It Made. I do not know if such luxury is available in the modern era. (I shall have to make my future Thai drug lord husband build one - I will lounge in it with my pet black panthers and drink expensive wines, and snap my fingers when I desire snacks.)

We visited the statue of Narasimha next. It's breathtaking, no other word for it. You amble along a path through the trees and gasp, astonished when you come onto the idol, grinning luridly in the lotus position, big round eyes flashing through the banana leaves. Narasimha is ornately carved and delicate - it's a miracle the statue has lasted so long and so well - and you can sit and look at him for a long time, watching the chipmunks wiggled in and out of his gaping canine teeth. (There is also a mysterious and thoughtful Shiva lingam next door, supposedly commissioned by a very poor and very reverent woman, as the stories go and always will.)

Next: Vittala Temple, the crown jewel of Hampi, a big temple complex set up along the river. You come onto it with your rickshaw, driving past the seemingly endless site of the old bazaar, storefronts and carved columns of fanged creatures riding horses. The avenue ends at the temple, and you disembark and head in, marveling at the big elephant-drawn stone chariot that sits in the middle. (The wheels apparantly used to actually turn, and it is fun to imagine latter-day tourists from long ago spinning the wheels, daring each other like tourists do today, because there always will be and always should be tourists.)

It is difficult to describe how ornate this place is: the peach colored stone wrought over and through with imagery and religious figures and various other characters, fresh detail emerging from seemingly ever portion of the complex. It is an archetiectural marvel and endlessly nice to look at - one cannot help but think of Kublai Khan and interesting opium dreams when you regard it - for surely this is what we think of when we consider forbidden temples and lost monuments, remnants of some sort of unconsidered and faded Asian majesty. This is not a Western monument and I personally find it far better - no dour religiosity, no blood on the cross or plump and idiotic cupids - but writhing carved panthers and screaming horses and smug looking reclining gods - it is at least more to my personal aesthetic.

And the weather - the rain had cleared off and we were in that period of honey colored brilliant sunshine that comes after it pours, when the sunlight reflects left-over pools of water and even the stone shines a little with slickness and wet. The water left behind shallow little reflecting pools all over the temple, rendering the stone warm, and I watched them, rapt, positioning myself on top of a stone elephant. (This meant every Indian guy in the complex had to have a photo with me of course, but you pay the price.)

One feature of Indian ruins is trees: there was one ancient tree in the center of the complex, shedding quivering yellow flowers that dropped into the pools, rippling inevitably away. You cannot capture what is so beautiful about falling leaves in spring, I think. I will stop trying, but I would like you to try to imagine it if you are reading this, to recall falling leaves and try to transition them to this temple, to a deliciously crisp day in early spring in India - and maybe you will understand a little of how I felt.

The last part of it all was the Monkey Temple, positioned at the top of a slightly nerve-wracking hill - you could hear the rickshaw screaming for mercy all the way up it. You disembark and walk through a small crack in the rocks, and find yourself within a palatial and high walled temple grounds, harems of monkeys ebbing and flowing out from the carvings. I was tired by now (and my eye was acting up, growing moderately evil as it sometimes does) - so I sat beneath the temple walls and watched the monkeys fight over coconuts, watched the supposedly ascetic sadhu's (or holyl men) rearrange the satellite dish that rose out of their modest white-washed home next door. Apparently the others followed a sadhu into his cave and were blessed, but I was content to just sit - an old woman who seemed to know all the sadhu's well padded up behind me in her bare feet, nodded languidly, and sat down within the shaded walls of the temple to knit. We watched the sun begin to go down and the moist earth dry up. Dinner time then.

We went back to the Mango Tree - how could we not? The place was lit atmospherically by candles, and fire flies spun in and out of the leaves as we ate. The vegetable do-piyaza was especially delicious, shot through with the flavor of caramelized, blackened onions - but all the food was delicious, simple and fresh, arriving quickly. We had to leave at 8:30 so we could make our bus out of Hospet and back to Bangalore, but we stayed as long as we could. We were all feeling profoundly silly, doubtless owing to how lovely the day had turned out to be, and teased each other mercilessly over coffee. I made a few passes at errant fireflies but had no successful captures. (Why must I always catch things, obtain them? It's a sport to me, like some people play chess.)

We took the rickshaw back in the dark - poor Chris, we were leaving him beyond to continue his journey onward - but he came up to see us off. We re-emerged into grimy and muddy Hospet again, dodging cows and random rubbish fires. Our bus had not arrived yet, and to our horror, we learned it would have no bathroom. Accordingly we found some particularly scary looking hotel bathrooms (there was a gecko in mine; Lorraine found an especially horrifying cockroach.)

The bus arrived and we bought blankets off the clever and American-accented blanket merchant who magically appeared at the right time. He was moving to Nottingham to work, and he told me he loved Pamela Anderson and wanted to visit California. I believe he will go far.

The bus - I found my top bunk and spread out. Adam and Aneesa were in the far back, and Adam and some young Indian guys broke out their guitars and began playing. The Indian guys were all ardent Pink Floyd fans, and we spent a good few hours singing half-remembered rock songs off key and attempting not to fall off the bunks when the bus took a particularly vicious turn. I did not get much sleep that night, as I slid constantly around and thumped against the windows, but the day made up for it anyway.

hampi day one part two CONVULUTED

had intended to rejoin the others at one point or another but they were not present at the hotel. Presuming they were 1. lost, 2. dead or 3. had maliciously abandoned me, I took a nice satisfying nap on the outdoor bed at the hotel, dropping off just as (without my knowledge) the Holi festival reached its raucous 1 PM climax.

I was awakened by the sound of the others thumping up the stairs erupting in giggles, covered (not surprisingly) head to foot in powder in pink and blue and yellow, dripping wet. They were disappointed to find I was relatively pristine. Lorraine noted, "We were taking bets - we figured you'd either come back absolutely covered in it or spotless."

I must justify myself: I did not set out to avoid participating in Holi, it just sort of happened, mostly because I managed to avoid what was apparently the pulsing center of the celebration down by the river. Everyone else partied with the Indians and the boys even jumped into the river, disregarding the big DEADLY WHIRLPOOL DO NOT SWIM signs that crop up periodically on the boulders. Well, you only live once. Or are sucked into a whirlpool. I do wish I'd managed to participate more fully, but after seeing the state of their clothes (and noticing over the next few days that that shit don't come off easy), I felt a little better about missing out on the craziness. I looked slightly smug and dozed off again as they all took showers.

The rain started pissing down with fervor and malice again, and everyone else went up for a late lunch. I curled up on my mildewy floor mattress and dozed off to sleep again, raindrops coming in through the screen window and pinging off my head. (oh, i am living in a constant state of dampness, i will start contracting mildew spores beneath my skin.)

We wandered around downtown Hampi in a disassociated manner for the rest of the evening, regarding dazed looking Western hippies splattered with color weave in and out of the temples and tourist shops. (Why don't European hippies ever wear bras? Is there some sort of unspoken code?)

The others went into the Virupaksha temple but I stayed behind, unwilling to hand over my shoes and socks in the continuing drizzle, unwilling to splash through the mud and gunk of the floors. I dropped to a comfortable crouch and watched the shoes with the young girl shoe attendant, who asked me my name with a sort of amiable disinterest. (She and her father spent the next few minutes laughing and kicking about the damp shoes in the rain, splashing water and each other and the stray dogs that went by.)

Hindu families had turned out from all over to visit the temple on Holi and faded in and out of the structure, dodging the equally large monkey clan that lived among the ruins, cadging donations from the symbolic baskets of coconut and banana and jasmine flowerers worshippers purchased at the door. One monkey ran down a couple of young men and ripped the basket out of their hands, everyone in the courtyard erupting into laughter at the sight of the mugging, the men looking embarrassed as anything. (But what can you do?) An old dog stood out in the open and quivered pathetically as the rain kicked up again, woofing without conviction at the monkeys that tormented him from the rafters, clinging to protuberant statues of Shiva and various attendants. I was entertained.

Despite the rain, the others decided to walk up the granite hill to the Royal Center. I followed damply, muttering to myself about mad dogs and Englishmen, but they tactfully ignored me. We ducked under the trees in the growing darkness to see the Ganesh temple, spotlighted elegantly in the evening. Unfortunately, the perturbed looking park attendant locked the gate after us. "You will have to go the other way,"
he shrugged, and a couple of laughing teenage boys led us on a trail through the slick and slippery rocks, weaving through the ruins in the growing darkness.

I was reminded with slightly painful nostalgia of the scent of the Utah desert rocks, right after thunderstorm, and I went a little wild, ricocheting gleefully off rocks and slithering off overhangs, as the others demanded I COME DOWN FROM THERE RIGHT NOW DON'T SLIP STOP DEFACING THE RUINS FAINE YOU ARE A WACKJOB

(I have heard these words from so many people over the years in reference to my behavior and they are all entirely true, and i will doubtless die of a blunt force injury some day or fall off something or be et by a cobra/feral pig/cannibal for not heeding them -but -but -i do so enjoy myself...)

In any case, we emerged into the damp and gloppy streets of Hampi again, passing by a couple of menacing bulls with particularly floppy humps and curving horns. We returned to the Villa and readied for dinner, Adam and I vying for possession of the nice wicker porch swing.

The others pulled themselves together and we departed. Unfortunately, I was obeying the terrible and vicious genetic imperative of what I like to call Dupuy Murderous Hunger, wherein people like my mother and myself suddenly become homocidal beasts in pursuit of sweet, sweet calories. Unfortunately no one else understands, simply becoming increasingly distressed as our eyes grow wild and our retorts become even sharper and nastier then usual - WE NEED FOOD. (Back me up mom.)

They did not understand and I stalked through the streets behind them in an increasingly dire state of bitchy hunger as they dispensed with various restaurant choices. Aneesa had noted that the Shanthi Riverside Restaurant looked busy and we popped our heads in, to be told there would be some sort of interminable wait. To add insult to injury the food was pizza, which I do not like one bit. (By way of explaination: I can eat pizza far too quickly. Also I dislike bread.)

In any case, I completely gave up and went across the street to get some gosh darn Indian food - palak masala and fruit salad, bam, done. Ate and paid. They were still waiting. We decided to play some sort of weird 20 questions Guess Who I Am game. (Chris was Scary Spice. This makes me laugh.)

We waited. Hippies flopped over on the couches provided for their hippie lounging pleasure, beneath deeply distressing black light neon posters featuring naked chicks and shrooms and Tolkien imagery. I ordered another watermelon mint juice. (Yum.)

And waited some more. It was by now after ten and the others were Very Hungry, as food appeared at sub glacial rates from the dark and mysterious kitchen. I considered snuggling up with the hippies on the couches to get some shut-eye. However, I am trying to avoid contracting head lice.

The evening wore on and the hippies began to file out, the owner shutting down the lights and clearing the tabes. We were left in a pool of light in the darkness and still the food had not arrived. The owner shrugged and looked non-commital, and finally Julie got some potatoes. Then the pizzas arrived. Which were eaten in irritated silence.

Lorraine, entirely understandably, tried to convince the stoney-faced owner that they should only pay half price, but he insisted he was the nice guy here - "Hey, I have to close down at 11! I was very kind to you to serve you at all." Protests that he'd said earlier the food would take an hour tops fell on deaf ears as the wait staff (and me) yawned all around us, the rain kicking up outside. We gave up and went outside and splattered to the mud.

My bed was unfortunately still damp.

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.