Hampi and vijayanagar ruins

We landed in hospet (the local transport hub for hampi) through a twelve hour, two leg bus journey, the second of which felt like it was driven by the ghost of colin macrae (rip). I never thought i would be literally thrown out of a bus window, only the prison style bars across it prevented me from it. The guy had his foot flat to the floor on either the accelerator or brake at any one time. It was kind of like being a passenger of a car in grand turismo where the controls are at the mercy of an angry three year old child. Once arrived in hospet and after we managed to pull our finger nails out of the seats in front of us and circulate some blood through our knuckles we jumped into a rickshaw and headed for hampi through paddy fields glistening in the moonlight, enjoying the cool evening desert breeze. We spent a night in the main bazaar and aimed for the other side of the river the following day to make a base for exploration. We came back across the river to check out some of the ruins.

The ruins and surrounding landscape are, in short, spellbinding. Everywhere as far as the eye can see there are huge boulders piled on top of one another in perculiar and precarious positions. You can see why many people feel a lot of spirituality here with the landscape holding some sort of grand design behind it all. Of course thats a load of crap, it all arose from a specific type of volcanic activity but that doesnt make it any less mesmerising to the eye. Anway we trundled our way through felt like a huge area but we must have only scratched the surface. We saw gigantic monolitic effigies of ganesh and the lion man god narasimha, miniature temples dotted across what looked like one massive piece sloped rock, a bath as big as an olympic swimming pool and countless temples dotted inbetween the rocks. We also came across a giant lingam in a shrine and surrounded by a pool. Ive recently learned that a lingam is an effigy if shivas twig and berries. So it seems strange to me that most of a nation can act and dress prudishly yet be more than comfortable blessing a giant penis.

We decided to chance it and take a walk through what we thought was an easily navigable set of ruins. It wasnt. After an hour of aimless walking in 40 degree heat and zero shade we decided we were lost and out of water. Niki's face was the colour of a beetroot and my brain felt like it was trying to escape from the pressure cooker that my skull had become. Luckily we remembered the way back to the main road and flagged down a rickshaw to take us back to town with our tails between our legs.