Happy Hampi

I don't think I have fully explained my relationship with India properly.
It is an entirely love/hate relationship, some days the rickshaw drivers and annoying people make me hate not only the country but all people everywhere, some days I am so in love I consider taking a year off and seeing the rest of it in a 6 month trip. It is facinating, frusterating, beautiful, smelly, and magical all at the same time. Oh India.

Yesterday I told Becca that my relationship with India was going through a rough patch and we were not speaking.

But first India and I had an awesome time! Laura was sick and puking her guts out by the time we got off the train on Wed morning and so we trucked off to find a semi-cheap hotel to rent for just the day so she could rest and Becca and I could leave our crap in the room and visit the zoo!

And that is what we did. The zoo was very sketch and green metal bars around the round concrete cages with one or two logs in them looked like a museum of how old zoos in America used to look and was really depressing. They did boast that they had varieties of pigeons and an "aquarium" that had the same fish you see in a Walmart fish area. We did see two leopards wrestle and saw some porcupines looking sad :-( BUT we also paid to go on a safari in a mini bus with bars on the sides. At first all we saw were deer...lame. But then we went through the sliding metal gates into the sloth bear, tiger, and lion safari areas where each of these animals roamed freely in a large enclosure and we got so close that my pics look like they could be from the national geographic. It was AWESOME!

Then we came back and had just enough time to rush to the movie theater and see Knight and Day as a way to waste the 3 hours until train time. The movie was hilarious and we got freshly cooked french fries, popcorn, a drink, and the ticket for around....$6
Plus I stole loo roll (toilet paper for those of you not living with 2 English girls) and saved us 50 rupees. Win.
Becca couldn't stop laughing when the Indian national anthem played at the beginning of the movie and we all stood up. To be fair the people singing onscreen were making ridiculous faces, but I was still mortified because national loyalty to India is amazingly strong. You always hear about things that are "the best in the world", India has the best milk production, postal service, the most....blah blah blah. But we remained safe and not beat up.

(PS just after I typed about a ton more things the power went out. Luckily blogspot had been saving my draft.Oh India.....)

So then we get to the train and ask about our tickets at the window because they say RAC. We don't know what the means. Ticket lady writes 3 4 5 on it and says we have seats not beds, for a 9 hour journey. Well that bloody well sucks so we go to the platform and wait for the train to arrive. But we have no clue what compartment RAC is so when the train arrives we scurry around asking everywhere and get these answers:
-You have a seat but we can't know where
-Ask the ticket guy, he knows all so just get on the train and wait for him
-You are on the waiting list and have no seats
-Find the ticket man, he is the only one who can help!
-You have seats but are on the wrong end of the train, this end isn't going to Hampi.

So we finally get on the train and wait for the ticket guy bu the aisles are small and we get pushed about and at one point we were all 3 stuck in the center of a compartment with people pushing from both ends and yelling at us to move. It was awful. At LAST, a man (Laura says he was a gift sent by God himself) called the train station and told us that not only do we have seats, YAY!, but we have beds! WOOHOO!!!!!!! Not only were they beds but they were the top berths which is awesome.

Sidenote: In sleeper class there are usually 3 people to each bench. There is the bench itself, an upper bed, and the backrest of the first folds up to become a middle bed. Thus, if you have the top bed then you can lie up there anytime you want because people are never sitting on your bed like the lower one or sitting in front of it like the middle one. So it's awesome.

So the night was SAVED! But first it was awful. So got an amazing nights sleep after that rush of adrenaline and got into Hospet at 7am. We needed to go to the bus stand and get the half hour bus to Hampi. But IMMEDIATELY upon setting foot in the train station, we were surrounded by rickshaw men yelling prices and asking questions and swarming around us until at one point Becca literally screamed like a lunatic "GO AWAY!!! WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING US?!?! AHHH!!!!" They mocked her...she did sound crazy. Finally got a 30 rupee rickshaw to Hampi instead, argued prices at 4 hotels and finally settled on one with a TV for 400 rupees. It's worth the extra 50 split between 3 people to have a TV because at night there is not a whole lot to do in India.

So that rocks. Plus I had Nutella and banana pancakes for breakfast and what is better than that? We spent today wandering around Hampi which is an archeological gold mine and the temples and ruins litter the country side. It's like the boulders of Colorado combined with the palm trees and greenery of Florida. It is spectacular. Me and a white cow made friends and he nuzzled me and stuck his nose in my face, Becca has pictures of me giggling like crazy and it will be my profile pic as soon as she posts it!

We paid 160 rupees for a walking tour which took 2.5 hrs and was great exercise. Learned all about the temples and Hinduism. Points which I thought were cool/ I don't feel like typing it all out officially/ interesting things.

• Ding Ding carvings are Karma Sutra carvings; they are awkward to look at with a guide; they are on all temples because they keep bad luck out; our guide says if girls are about to be married and are nervous they consult the carvings for education...one involves a snake so I wouldn't suggest it.
• No one worships Brahma except for one temple in Pushkar even though he created the universe because he married one of his daughters. Fail.
• For a good husband, women walk 108 steps around the temple
• some monkey worshiping monks sit around and smoke pot in the temple all day
• the monkey god is the god of strength and gyms have a statue of him to consult before working out
• Some monks of this one division I forget never wear clothes, live in a cave or a temple for 20 years, can go 10 years without eating, spend 10 hrs a day standing on one foot, if you see one out of the cave they are good luck
• People throw dead bodies in the Ganges river and also ashes....this is where all the people go to wash because it is a holy river. Ew.
• Shiva rides the bull Nandi, Vishnu rides an eagle, Ganesh (the one with the elephant head and god of good luck) rides a rat. Fail.
• If a pig enters your house it is good luck to catch him in the center of the house and bury him alive.
• True Jainism people wear a scarf round their mouth so they don't hurt bugs, wave a stick in front of them to avoid harming any living thing, and only eat fruits...nothing from the ground.
• The Muslims ruined all the temples because if a statue of a god has been damaged then it cannot be worshiped.
  
• Most of these temples were underground until about 1940. How cool is that?!?!?

Google it. This is the stuff outta postcards man. We will spend days exploring and I think I will leave Monday night if possible to go back to Fort Cochin. I think this but it is India so I make no guarantees. Except that I will come back to India. The highs here absolutely demolish the memory of the lows.