Badami

So it was a 6 hour bus trip from Hampi to Badami. I don’t usually mind the long bus trips, I put in my iPod and look out the window. Unfortunately – or some might say fortunately – I met an Irish guy on the bus. He didn’t stop talking, he wanted to talk the whole time. I eventually decided to try to sleep to shut him up. Don’t get me wrong, some company is good, some conversation is good and he was nice enough, but 6 hours is a long time on a very bumpy bus to be making chit-chat.

Then when I got there it was a little depressing. The reason I had decided to go to Badami is because of the caves, I’ll get to explaining the caves. Rooms were crap and expensive and loud, this pissed me off, especially since I spent 6 hours on a bus to get away from the noise.

So I decided to only spend 1 night and get out of there as soon as possible. In the morning I got up and went to the caves, I was in a bad mood and generally not feeling very happy. The caves changed all of that – well, the caves themselves were just caves, caves with amazingly detailed carvings and temples built in, but still caves. It was the school kids again that saved it.

This time I sat talking to a group of about 50 high school students and their teachers, they were all really lovely. People usually want to shake my hand, and the girls like to pat my arm or you could say ‘stroke’ This group was really funny because whenever a new teacher came forward and the principal showed up at one point, the girls made a really ig deal about me shaking their hand. It was really funny.

It put me in really good spirits for the bus trip. The bus trip was another 6 hour event. I had many conversations with people and I met a group of girls from an English-speaking school. They quizzed me, they wanted to see my passport and started to read it. They asked me all about Australia and wanted to know thing like our national flower and animal etc. I didn’t know most of it. They asked our Prime Ministers name and how to spell it. They were amazing, really wanting to take advantage of the learning opportunity that I was. Now I am back in Goa.

I’ll get to a Christmas post soon

If you haven’t seen it, there is a post about Hampi below.

Hampi

So I am way, way, way behind with my blogging at the moment. Let’s start with Hampi. I went to Hampi for a few days last week, it was Ok but exhausting. To be honest, i’m not too sure why everyone raves about it the way they do.

Hampi was the centre of some empire in the 13/14/15th Centuries, so there are loads of ruins around. This is all exciting, for the first 30 mins, but after a little while it all starts to look the same and it is just sad. Why is it sad? Because most of the ruins are ruins because of religious wars. The temples (both Hindu and Muslim) were defaced so that they could no longer be used as a place of worship. No matter what you believe, I think it is sad to have people destroying other people’s images of God or whatever.

The saving grace was that I did a tour of all these ruins on a Saturday. This meant there were heaps and heaps of schools from nearby – up to 6 hours drive – doing a field trip to see the ruins. So I had hundreds and I really do mean hundreds of kids wanting to touch my skin and ask me my name and practice the very little English they know “What is your name?” “What is your country?” and then sometimes they could ask “What is your mother name?” father name, brother name, sister name etc. It was so much fun. The kids really light up talking to me, they love it – so did I for that matter.

The only person who didn’t like it was my rickshaw driver. I had paid him to give me a day tour and he saw the kids as being ‘in the way’ of me seeing the sights where as I was sitting half out of the rickshaw so that I could shake everyone’s hand.

There are some photo’s of the kids on my flickr account. They also love having their photo taken. I had planned to stay in Hampi for 1 week, but it was too noisy and I wans’t that big of a fan so I went to Badami. See the post on Badami

Oh, I also spent 10Rs (a few cents) on getting a ‘blessing’ from the temple elephant.

so much to write about…

… and so little time.

Basically, I have done and seen loads of things but at the moment I dont have time to share.

Will put some photos and all that up soon ish.

The plan for the rest of my time in India:

Tomorrow, bus from Hampi to Badami. There are some caves at Badami and I don’t want to be here anymore.

Then on the 23rd I catch local bus or train to Hubili, that night I catch an overnight train to Goa – getting in at 6am or something stupid.

I then stay in Goa until the 3rd Jan. On the 3rd I catch a 30 hour train to Delhi. The next day I fly to Khujaraho (cant remember how its spelled and too tired to check). They have ancient caves with kama sutra style carvings in them. Then I fly to Varanasi. I won’t even try to explain it yet.

Then overnight train to Kolkata, there for 2 nights then fly to Kuala Lumpur on the 14th Jan.

Not too sure after that.  But getting to Bali somehow then home!

Goa

It’s been really nice to be in Goa. After the desert it’s good to be somewhere warm with great beaches and not as many sleezy men.
I’m staying with Chantalle which has been great. George and Henry (the poodles) are around for me to play with during the day and she has a nice apartment in the resort.

Tomorrow I am going to Hampi for a week, I have been told by many people that Hampi is a must. Then I am coming back to have Christmas and New Years with Chantalle and should be able to see Laura somewhere in there too.

I haven’t been doing much here, going to the beach a couple of times a day, eating healthy and amazing foods, doing my tai chi, and planning the rest of my trip.
It’s all very exciting – I am looking at getting into Australia mid-late Feb, to Sydney towards the end of Feb.

270 days

I have been away for!

Camel Safari

I have put some photos of it up on http://www.flickr.com/photos/meags/

At the start it was great. I have wanted to ride a camel ever since I rode an elephant in April. They are really funny animals, they look, sit, eat and walk funny.

It was really enjoyable for the first few hours. Then we stopped and our guide cooked us lunch while we rested in the shade of a tree.

It kind of went downhill from there. The afternoon was hard, my legs were really sore and they made us keep galloping so that we would make it to the sand dunes for sunset. bouncing half a metre up and down when your legs and but are already sore is not a good thing at all.

Then at night I was freezing. I tried to warn them I get cold easily (I mean I carry a jacket around in summer in Australia) but they just kept assuring me I would be fine. After what felt like hours and my toes were going numb I got out of my ‘bed’ to ask for an extra blanket.  Our guides had vanished, they had told us there were more blankets and to let them know if we needed anything. They were gone.

So, I took a blanket from their bed and tried to go to sleep. It was around this point my stomach decided to start churning. Never a good thing. After getting up in the freezing cold to go to the toilet my strange migraine started. These are the headaches I used to be on anti-epilepsy  medication to manage.

I thought at this point that it must be close to sunrise and that we would be getting out of there soon, so I checked the time. 11:30pm!!!! It was a horrible thing to learn.

So, I drugged myself up with sleeping tablets and tried to salvage the night, I just told myself everything would be better in the morning.

I’m not sure how long later, one of the guides came back and took his blanket, I asked for another one because I was still cold even with his think one but they didnt have any!

finally, I got to sleep. I work up with the sunrise and not surprisingly I was roasting under my 5 blankets with 3 layers of clothing on.

We set off and i told them I needed to leave early. We were meant to keep going until 5pm. My migraine wasn’t going away (they never ever last this long) and my stomach couldn’t handle food.

It wasn’t until I actually started crying (from the pain of the headache) that they took me seriously and said they could get a jeep to pick me up. Naturally, they tried to exploit the situation so that I would pay a fortune, luckily I am not that stupid. I managed to get the people from my guest house to come and get me from the next village and was in bed with strong pain killers within the hour.

So, all in all it was crap. But I am glad that I finally rode a camel and i have some good photos to show for it. 

march to november

I was going to write a whole story about how good this trip has been for me, but the picture speaks for itself.

Jaisalmer

So, after  19 or 20 hours on a train I have arrived in the desert. I already love it here.

I went with one of the touts who meets the train, he was very polite and not pushy at all to a guest house and decided to stay there. Its 100Rs per night, $2.50 and I have my own bathroom and balcony. The people are really nice.

I have arranged to go on a camel trek tomorrow for 2 days, 1 night. I’m really excited about it, they have promised me that everything will be taken care of and will run smoothly. Most importantly, that I won’t be cold or thirsty at any point which is important for me.

This town seems so chilled out that I already think it is great. I will get some photos up in a few days, it really is beautiful.

The long train trip was no drama at all. I paid for the best class ticket I could get and it was worth it. Quite a comfortable trip really, although I missed breakfast. I had all sorts of things to do to overcome the boredom of being on a train for 19 hours, but only did one of them (I watched a movie on my laptop this morning when I woke up). The rest of the time I was talking to people and sleeping.

So, apart from missing Dan and having to adjust to the different way I am treated now that I walk around alone, things are looking really good. My health kick is paying off because I have energy and feel great.

Oh, I should mention that I actually decided to unpack this time, I have organised my room and things are tidy. Makes me feel like a grown up (Oh No)     – apparently this little picture means ‘shock’

Hope you all are well too.