India 2012: Hampi, Mysore (Feb 14-18)

I arrived in Hampi, Karnataka at sunrise on February 14^th after an overpriced overnight bus from Panaji, Goa.  Nine hundred precious Rupees!  There were probably cheaper options, but this particular bus presented itself to me at the moment I most wanted to leave Panaji, Goa.

My bunkmate from the side-by-side sleep-next-to-a-stranger AC bus was an affable Frenchman named Mathieu.  Turns out we had one of those strange traveler-connections – he had met and hung out with one of the travelers I had been on a camel safari with in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.

Mathieu.

This was a bit of a strange coincidence, but not that strange.  After backpacking for a few weeks, faces in the guesthouse/restaurant/temple/train start looking familiar.  “Didn’t I meet those two Belgian girls in XYZ town?”  Yep.  There are only so many routes independent travelers take, and only so many places to sleep/eat.

For the 10-hour duration, our bus driver pushed the engine and brakes to their limit.  As Mathieu and I sat up and chatted, the bus stopped particularly short, flinging me head first into the partition separating us from the German guy in the next bunk.  It was loud enough to wake him up.  Sleepy or not, it was time to lay down for personal safety.

The bus arrived on schedule.  Bleary-eyed and disoriented, we plopped off the bus and got stormed hard by hungry autorickshaw touts, jamming maps in our faces and standing anywhere we walked in a sort of man-to-man defense (an offensive defense!).

“10 Rupees, anywhere in town!” was the pitch.

But that sounds like a trick –  it’s gotta be a small, walk-able town, right?  Right!  TINY!  And yeah, I know ten Rupees is only $0.20 US.  But if I don’t need a ride, why spend the money?

Mathieu had teamed up with a countrywoman of his own on the bus – Chloe – and the three of us circled the wagons (rather, backpacks) against the touts as we attempted to clandestinely check our guidebooks for words of wisdom regarding arrival in Hampi.

Chloe.

The longer we stalled, the more aggressive the touts became – pushing me and calling Chloe stupid.  No deal.  The three of us walked west into town with the packs and kept our ten Rupees.  The sun was just rising, illuminating the tallest temple in town – Virupaksha.  Why would I want to ride past that when I could hike it?

Virupaksha Temple’s 50m high gopuram.

Fast friends, we decided to split a room between the three of us.  We bid out at a few guesthouses/homestays and landed at 600 rupees for three people (200 per person) – a double bed and a mattress on the floor.  Who’s the floor person?  Who cares – the bed’s equally hard.

Hampi is a playground of balancing boulders and long abandoned temples.  You’d think it was in the desert at first glance, but a river runs through it and banana and palm trees and electric green rice paddies jump up between dry patches.  The place has a bit of magic to it.  I remember calling it “one of the most beautiful places I’ve been” in a moment of on-the-head earnestness.  What  had become of my precious cynicism?

No alcohol is sold in Hampi due to the town’s religious significance which makes it easy to wake up to see the sun rise from behind a different hill each morning.  Later, wake up again for sunset:  the sun and heat is so intense from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM that it’s difficult to do anything other than daily worship of the Hindu god of afternoon naptime.

Sunrise in Hampi.

The town of Hampi is small, but there’s plenty to see outside of the bazaar and we needed a way to get around.  Fortunately, motorbikes are cheap to rent in Hampi and the roads are almost empty enough to avoid using your horn.  But why would you?  This is INDIA.  We got two bikes between the three of us and set off for the main temple sites.

ancient tree at Hampi’s Vittala temple.

The temple sites were fairly interesting, but it was particularly hot outside, and frequent sit-down shade and water breaks were in order.  Hard to focus on already-difficult-to-digest history and mythology when your brain’s broken from the heat.  We got templed-out pretty quick.

The first day of motorbiking was so much fun that a second was in order.  We picked up the bikes again the next morning and set off in the direction of Anegundi – the town just east of Hampi across the Tungabhadra river and the supposed birthplace of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman.

First order of business for passage to Anegundi:  cross the river.  We had to find the ferry that accommodated vehicles.  After a long, fruitless (but fun) hunt filled with ever-conflicting verbal directions from locals, Mathieu and Chloe’s bike decided to cease running.  Great!  Then its front tire went flat.  Joy! Burning in the midday sun, we pushed the bikes for over a kilometer back to a safe drop off point where the rental company could retrieve the faulty one.

We had to get back to the rental place to deliver the bad news.  All three of us loaded onto my still-functional 75cc moped (a full 25cc per body) and just barely made it up the hills for the return to Hampi bazaar.

The rental guy claimed the damage was our responsibility.  We didn’t agree.  After some choice words and a threats of police involvement, 100 Rupees made the problem go away.  Whatever.  We found a comfortable cafe to ride out the afternoon and napped until the sun was tolerably low in the sky.

When you buy your drinkable coconut, you get a straw with it. After you’re done with the coconut, the straws end up on the ground like so – even outside UNESCO World Heritage sites like Vittala Temple in Hampi.

After three nights and four days of Hampi, it was time to get back on the road.  Mathieu, Chloe and I decided to travel south together.

We left Hampi on the 8:40 PM train out of Hospet after a hard-earned 100 rupee ride to the train station (Hospet is the nearest train station to Hampi – around 10 km away).  The rick drivers once again managed to call us “stupid” on the way out (naturally – they wanted 150 rupees for the route!).

The train arrived and we loaded into sleeper class – the non-air-conditioned three-tier cars in which you’re offered no sheets or blankets, but pay a lower fare than the AC sleeper cars.  My sweater became a pillow, and off we went, en route to Bangalore.

I had heard Bangalore was a polluted, congested mess.  We skipped it, boarding the next 2^nd Class car to Mysore.  Moving on.

We spent about 5 hours in Mysore seeing the main sites:  the Palace and the market.  From what I witnessed in our limited time there, I can say that Mysore is probably just another big Indian city.  Or did I miss out on its hidden charm? Who knows.

The much-hyped Maharaja’s Palace in Mysore looked like a series of truck bays from the front. Witness the splendor! Security and ticketing is extra annoying here, too.

We got out of Mysore on an afternoon government bus to the hill station town of Ooty, my first stop in the state of Tamil Nadu and an introduction to the Western Ghats – a high elevation area where the British once rode out the hot months in the comparative cool of the hills.

pushing through Devaraja Market.

I like the government buses.  You don’t have to book ahead, most major routes have frequent service (if you miss one, there’ll be another), and fares are cheap.  Sure, you’re crammed into a small space with more people than should ever be in such a space, but it’s worth it for the convenience.  The oft-waitlisted trains are sometimes just too difficult or too irritating to book.

As the bus climbed the hill into Ooty, we cut open the pomegranates we purchased at the Mysore market (a bit expensive at 160 rupees per kilo) in the Karnataka state bus on the horrible roads to Ooty, in Tamil Nadu.  The interior lights kicked off the second we had the seedy fruit in our hands.  A few seeds got misplaced in the darkness, landing in Mathieu’s seat.  Ever the wearer of light-colored clothing in a country with no clean surfaces, Mathieu’s off-white pants inherited a new, fashion-forward spotty purple pattern.

Rebranding sought. Just outside Ooty.

It was around 9:00 PM when we arrived, and Ooty, and like so many Indian cities, was closing up shop for the night.  We walked in the direction of a recommended guidehouse.  Full.  We took a room in the next one over.  The beds were basically plywood platforms with thin pads on top, with blankets so dirty that they made my skin crawl – but after an overnight train and the mountain bus, I may have been filthier than the bed in which I slept.

NEXT STOP:  Ooty