The coolest little temple town....

We departed for Hampi on what turned out to be a completely horrible bus ride, probably the worst for me. I couldn't handle it at all and consider it by far the worst experience I have ever had in India or even while travelling. Much worse than asthma underwater or say being sick in South America. I'm not actually convinced this was worse than other bus rides I've been on but I am utterly convinced that I can no longer handle that sort of ride. Terrifying , sickening and non stop with mattresses in the back ( as a deluxe sleeper) rather than seats. I tried to get off the bus early but the driver refused to leave me as we were in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere with zero people close by and obviously it wasn't safe.

We ended up having to get off early though anyway as it gave me a full blown anxiety attack and stayed in Hospet a small town pretty near to Hampi which would have been our final destination. There was nothing good about Hospet ( bar the surprise hot water in our hotel ) and we ended up having a massive fight with our hotel owners that left us dispirited and sick of India.

Which is why it turned out so lucky that Hampi was one of the best places we have been while travelling! It is a holy town and the site of some of South India's best temple ruins. Its also just a great feeling , groovy backpacker town and we were very happy to be there...

Some of the temples were more memorable than others, the main temple for instance was one of the coolest holy temples or ruins I have ever seen. Each one of the many pillars in the temples music and banquet hall made a different sound when drummed, cymbals sounds, deep bass sounds even the do Ra me on one set. It meant that in the kingdoms hey day ,146 musicians would drum on the pillars and 146 girls would dance for the king to the music and the sound could be heard almost a kilometre away where the peasants would gather and listen....

Hampi belonged to a king, known in slang as the Playboy King, as he used to find beautiful peasant girls with whom he would make a deal. He would tell them to run as far as they could in one direction and however much land they covered before he caught them would belong to them after he had spent the night with them.

Hampi was also well known for its slave trading, for its horse trading and for its sales of beautiful girls who were tied up in long rows opposite the long rows of horses tied up....

We also visted the main temple in Hampi where we played with the temple Elephant ( the first elephant that Netty had ever seen) and where wild rabid monkeys tried to attack Curt.
He had however the day before had been able to play with normal happy monkeys who had been hanging off one of the other temples.

We were also lucky enough to witness the departure of a holy man on a pilgrimage , something that was happening all over India that day. Crowds of people and children, much music and the Holy man deep in a trance.

We could have spent much longer in Hampi but unfortunately we were getting near the end of our trip in India and needed to make it back to Goa by the tenth, to Arrambol to chill out for a few days prior to Nettys leaving. We now couldn't use our return tickets by bus so ended up choosing the train and leaving Hampi a day early...which was hugely disappointing.....
A magical place everyone should go to!