Hampi

From Goa I took a 9 hours night bus to Hampi. I didn´t know what to expect except lots of tem­ple ruins. After arriv­ing at the bus sta­tion in Hampi I heard already a sec­ond time from a Tuk­Tuk dri­ver that the acco­mo­da­tion I booked in advance is far away one the oth­er site of the riv­er and there are only few Tuk­Tuks on that site. They´d charge 1000 rupees for the ride. There­fore I decid­ed for anoth­er Home­s­tay in the small city cen­tre for 300 rupees a night. The dri­ver (Jilan) drove me for 50 rupees to my Home­s­tay that is man­aged by the wife of his cousin. For 2 nights it was com­plete­ly fine! A big bed, a mosc­i­to net, a shared bath room and a toi­let – that´s all I need­ed! Jilan took me for 800 rupees dur­ing the whole day (we start­ed at 11 am) to all the impor­tant sights, explained the his­to­ry as well as the back­round to each tem­ple and clicked some pic­tures of me. For sun­set we drove to his favourite spot, the Malya­van­ta Raghu­natha tem­ple. Hav­ing a stunnng view over the whole val­ley we enjoyed the last sun­rays of the day from the mag­i­cal rock for­ma­tions. A lit­tle Shi­va tem­ple grow­ing from with­in the rock seemed being more a hybrid between a cave and a temple.

On the next day I had a long sleep, vis­it­ed a café at the oth­er site of the riv­er which is known as Hip­pie Island and pre­pared my mind already for the next day: for the sun­rise at 5 am in Anjaneya hill which is also known as the birth­place of Hanu­man. He´s the God of mon­keys in Hin­duism and a loy­al friend of God Rama. He helped Rama to get his wife Sita back from the demon Ravana. Because of this Hanu­man is known as sym­bol for ded­i­ca­tion and loyality.

The next morn­ing Jilan and Raquel, a trav­eller from Por­tu­gal, picked me up and we drove to Anjaneya Hill. After around 30 min hik­ing and trekking we reached the hill­top and found a nice place to wel­come the next morn­ing. It was mag­i­cal! We observed the reflec­tions of the sun­rays in the riv­er being a sign of the ris­ing sun. After quite a while the red fire­ball moved up behind the moun­tains. That was/is mag­ic!! The fol­low­ing hours we drove to a Durgha- and sev­er­al Hanu­man tem­ples and a big lake where we stopped for a while. Jilan dropped us for lunch back in the old city cen­tre. It´s quite fas­ci­nat­ing that 500000 peo­ple lived there 500 years ago and now the pop­u­la­tion decreased to 8000. I made a looong break from get­ting up and hik­ing so ear­ly and decid­ed to explore Hip­pie Island a bit. It´s good to know that the last fer­ry tot he oth­er site of the riv­er is leav­ing at 5:30 pm! I almost missed it dur­ing wait­ing for the Momos I ordered. A friend told me that she got lost for 2 weeks while observ­ing the rice fields. I did the same for 2 hours and I under­stand her now.

After I almost missed the fer­ry while wait­ing for the momos and after being dri­ven on a motor bike to catch the fer­ry I final­ly could pre­pare to going for sun­set. I decid­ed to vis­it the same moun­tain for sun­set I already went 1 evening ago but I had much more time than before. The day before I stopped hik­ing at the point I thought the view would be the most beau­ti­ful one (and I had to stop because it was too late to hike more up). This time I only want­ed to enjoy and to find a nice peace­ful loca­tion with few tourists. Hav­ing more time I could not only hike a bit more up the moun­tain but also I dis­cov­ered a big cave hid­ing in the moun­tain. In between I had to use my torch because I couldn´t even see my hand in front of my eyes! After leav­ing the cave a climbed a bit more up and reached a tem­ple ruin that was more used as a sun­set point than a tem­ple. The view on the cal­ley was stun­ning from there! I observed the green rice fields chang­ing slow­ly into a brown­ish moon land­scape and from there chang­ing back again to green for­rests. Hampi is a mag­i­cal place; one of the most mag­i­cal places for me so far in India! After I sat there for a while enjoy­ing the set­ting sun on the val­ley a female trav­eller I met already in Jodh­pur joined me. We walked back to my Home­s­tay, I show­ered, gave her some clothes that I didn´t need any­more and she accom­pa­nied me to the bus sta­tion. When I arrived in Hos­pet, which is the city the train would leave from, I got a foodgasm on the way tot he train sta­tion in one of the local restau­rants. Ful­ly sat­is­fied I went tot he train sta­tion for tak­ing my first train in India: from Hos­pet to Mysore; 12 hours in the sleep­er class in the low­est bed. After I had booked the train one day before oth­er friends told me that I should sleep, as a woman, on the upper bed. You can read in my blog post about my expe­ri­ences in night trains in the sleep­er class in India.