By Dan
Tuesday 24th of July 2017
The pleather stuck to our skin as we peeled ourselves off the seats. After a long and sticky night on the bus we’d arrived in Hampi – the ancient city found in the centre of south India. The masses of building-sized boulders and palm trees dotted about the landscape created a Flinstonian environment; we’d found ourselves in a prehistoric world. Yabadabbadoo.
We spent the first day basically recovering – long haul bus trips seem to have the effect of a lethargic agent on us, myself in particular. I can chalk it down to the overnight trips with little to no sleep, after which I want to have nothing to do with the world. I’d prefer to lay on a bed, read and fall asleep. It’s a routine without rhythm and throws everything out for a few days, which is unfortunate for me, as we tend to move around every few days. I can tell it annoys Richelle. Her sense of adventure is stronger and more compelling and she can’t understand why I’m unable to shake off the lingering lethargy. Every time I make a suggestion that leans towards the indolent I can feel the wave of disappointment rush from her and I feel like I’m letting her down. Fortunately for us, Hampi proved to be a little different. Our room was full of mosquitoes and resembled a prison cell with a warden who has a love for pastels. And with my current fear of malaria, it was enough motivation to keep me on my feet.
Hampi isn’t exactly ancient, but at 600 years old it’s enough to captivate even the most skeptical of souls. The site is a mixture of ruined temples and palaces, some of which are still functioning, and giant unearthly boulders that lie in even bigger piles for kilometres around. Tourists will find themselves occupying Hampi Bazaar, a place that’s crammed with lodges and shops. But not nearly as many as there once was. The government has been waging a war of conservation against time and decay and in doing so has forced most of the locals to relocate a few kilometres away. This has given the temples a chance to survive, but, except for the teeming visitors crawling all over the sites, the place feels abandoned and desolate. I’m sure the government found a decent compromise, but I can’t help feeling that the decision was made for the tourist and her wads of rupees and not the local.
We spent the afternoon exploring Virupashkar Temple and the surrounding hills. Inside, we found Lakshmi the temple’s elephant, who rakes in a steady income by blessing those that give her money; kissing their heads with her trunk. It still amazes me that people are able to ignore the clinking chain around her neck and ankle and choose to believe that her position in life is the will of the gods and not a man with a stick’s. I imagine her giving the tourists a hardier slap, breaking free of her chains and eating her jailor – it makes me feel slightly better about the situation.
Virupashkar is the oldest temple in the area and happens to be the one that’s also functioning. Hindus come from all around to pray and make their offering to the temple’s namesake, the reincarnation of Shiva. Although the temple was built in the 15th Century, it has actually been a place of worship since the 7th, when it was only a small collection of shrines.
The rest of the afternoon was spent climbing the hill and exploring the deserted structures. It was hard to fathom how massive the boulders were, so a great deal of hugging and measuring was needed to truly grasp their size.
The next day we hired bicycles and ventured further away from the bazaar. We had ambitious plans to see the main sites around, which was probably more than we needed to. However, we only had two full days to explore in Hampi as we discovered the only bus directly to Chennai left a day earlier than we hoped. So a big day felt necessary. We walked along the banks of the river and made our way first to Vittala temple, where we splashed a bit and got ourselves a guide. Richelle loved the great stone chariot and insisted on getting her photo in front of it, usually she prefers me to take my photo in front of things.
We continued on and rode 7 or 8 kays to the small Kamalapur. This is the place where the government relocated the locals to, I hear there are still a lot of people waiting to receive their promised acre lots for their displacement. We ate a cheap lunch at one of the restaurants, and we amused ourselves by watching an old man in a constant state of cleaning the floor. You could tell he took the job very seriously and I felt for him as I realised how isolated he was in this state of seriousness; in comparison the rest of the staff appeared lazier than the cows that lay in the street outside.
We spent the next hours exploring the Royal complex, where the wind had picked up to something more like a gale. I could feel myself waning as we struggled against it. And I began to subtly hint at returning home. After an hour the hints soon turned into blatant requests and I began searching for places to sit, not really wanting to go on much more. We finally made our way back home and crashed out. Spending our time in the Mango Tree restaurant, it’s one of three or four restaurants in the small tourist town and apparently used to be located under a giant mango tree, before it too was ousted by the UNESCO fuelled government.
We returned back to the hotel and were greeted by a new friend that Richelle had made: a toddler named Chinnay. The little girl was in love with Richelle. Her face would light up every time she saw her and she would bring Richelle her favourite toy or miscellaneous object of the moment. Needless to say, I was invisible. She seemed to have developed an instinctive disliking for me and all men, the girl was obviously wise beyond her years.
For our final day we planned to visit the local waterfalls, an alleged two kilometre walk from our guesthouse. This turned into four kilometres as we met more people along the way. Our first guest was a local drug dealer who spent all of ten minutes trying to convince me that marijuana and mushrooms weren’t drugs because they’re natural. I then spent the next ten minutes trying to teach him the difference between natural and synthetic, he wasn’t having any of it. Once he realised I wasn’t going to be buying drugs from him he then tried to convince us that he was actually a guide to the waterfall. I should’ve realised his swindling ways when he asked where I was from. Our next guests were actually two dogs, they appeared to be close friends, one was completely black and the other completely white, naturally we named them Black and White. Richelle wanted to call one Michael and the other Jackson. Unfortunately, White was chased away by another local dog and Black chose to abandon his long time friend for us. I’m not sure how I felt about having a traitor in our midst. Our third and final guest was a man who was convinced that we didn’t know the way to the waterfall. I was convinced that though we may not be sure where it was, we knew what direction it was in and hence would have a go ourselves. It got to the point when he started following us to try and force us to take his help. Even going as far to wait till we appeared to not know the way and come running out of the bushes to say it was the other way. The guy was an obvious swindler and when I told him I wasn’t going to give him any money he said, “I’ll take you there and if you think I do good job you can pay me, if not, you don’t have to pay me.” To which I politely told him to, “fuck off, we want to find our own way.” It’s called exploring for a reason.
Anyway, we finally made it to the hulking boulders that formed the boundary of the river and tried to follow the noises of the running water. This is where Black showed his true colour, yellow, and abandoned us too. We bouldered our way up the river, coming across some fisherman who pointed us in the right direction. As we made our way upstream, we slowly realised that maybe we were a few weeks too early, that maybe there aren’t any waterfalls until monsoon reaches this part of India. Our thoughts were soon proven when all we found were a series of underground waterfalls that were impossible to glimpse. But we did hear them.
It was a hot day and we had to be back at our hotel by quarter to two to catch a tuk tuk to the bus stop. So the pace coming back was a reasonably fast one. Our water ran out quickly, but the journey distracted us from this slight complication. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that every now and then we’ve come across thickets of gum trees all over India. And the current ones we came across made us miss home for a while. After an hour of bouldering and wayfinding we finally made it to the small village on the other side of the river. It’s called Hampi Island. We ate lunch here and watched the activity of the town from our quiet vantage point.
We had half an hour to get back across the river and into our tuk tuk when disaster struck. As we made our way back across the river, still feeling quite adventurous, we foolishly chose the more bouldered route. We’d reached the last boulder before crossing and it was too far for Richelle to stretch across to. So she stepped down to the muddy ground to find a better hold, and as she stepped she slipped. I watched it all happen in slow motion. The stepping foot, the pinwheeling arms, the wide eyes as her body lurched sideways toward the water, and finally her camera going under. I quickly grabbed it from her and tried to dry it but it was no use. It wasn’t responding. And to make matters better, it started to pour.
There wasn’t much we could do. By now we were late for the tuk tuk and we didn’t have the time or tools to pull it apart to get some air at it. Dismayed, we jumped in the cab and headed for Hospet and the bus to Chennai. Thankfully the bus was a luxurious sleeper, resembling something similar to business class seat on a flight, which took our minds off the disaster. But I could tell Richelle was close to tears, if she lost her camera all else would surely follow soon after.