Cycling, hippys and Delhi belly in Hampi

I should have buns of steel now. I’ve spent the last four days cycling (with a bike with no brakes), climbing hills or swimming in Hampi which has offered the most stunning natural scenery that I have seen in India so far. There are temples dotted everywhere on top of hills made up by large boulders that appear  like they have been artistically placed by a giant human. Surrounding the hills are endless fields of  banana or coconut tress, rice paddies, lakes and streams.  I also got to nip into the nearby village and even wash some sari’s in the lake with the women. All the while I was thinking, thank God for washing machines! Chuck the clothes in, come back an hour later and done! But not in some parts of India, women can spend hours washing clothes. Actually, they generally seem to do all of the the hard labour, from farming, cleaning, cooking to raising the children. Next time I moan about trains being late to work in London, just send me to a village in India for a reality check. 

Whilst a fellow traveler and I were taking pictures in one of the temples, we saw a colourful tree and thought that it would make a nice picture and so we climbed all over it snapping away. Next thing you know, a local is shouting at us to get off because the tree is God! Oh no, we had just stood all over God! Needless to say, which had a chuckle or two about our ignorance.

Every day has been a blast in Hampi, although today I was finally was struck down by my first bout of the Delhi belly. This was extra annoying as it was my last sight seeing day in Hampi and I had this great itinerary planned and then as soon as I was three quarters of a way up one of the highest hills in Hampi, I felt my stomach turn. So the next three hours was spent with me sprawled across a boulder holding my stomach and trying to hatch a plan to call a rescue service. I was so tired, I wouldn’t have cared if I rolled down the side of a boulder to be ravaged by the monkeys. Luckily sympathetic  tourists offered me water (yes, I didn’t take any with me even though it was 35+ degrees coz I thought I was hard) and I managed to muster up the energy to crawl back to my guest house.

So I’ve met some great people again in Hampi, some Liverpudlians which reminded me of home with their British sense of humour and I guess it was also only a matter of time before I hung out with a hippie or two but I got talking to India’s looniest hippy and was stuck listening to stories about the energy from the sun, stars and blah blah blah for hours on end. My listening to my iPod and reading a book was still not an obvious enough hint for him that he left me no choice but for me to tell him to vamoose in the end and he still took half an hour to leave my porch! (Oh my God! He is calling me right now in this internet café and he’s telling me that he just missed his bus to the next town. Please no).  

I’m off to Gokarna tomorrow which is about 2 hours south of Goa and will be taking the sleeper bus there. This 11 hour trip should be fun.