Holi moli

The majority of our stay in hampi was spent in a chilled place overlooking paddy fields and palm trees that frame the sunset. There wasnt really much to report as we lazed the days away, read books and listened to music. The food was pretty dire traveller fodder and the indian dishes were no better than the average slop served to the boozed up ingrates on brick lane at 11pm. Hampi is reknowned to be a bit of a stoner haven and two russian lads in our place must have found that higher plane. Each night for hours in the restaurant they practiced playing their mouth guitars with pony tail guy setting the monotonic relentless pace and his slightly more stoned shaven headed side kick struggling to keep up in synch. All resulting in an annoying aural mess and me being the archetypal soft brit keeping quiet and not complaining. Karma i thought. Karma.

So on to holi... We left our room ready for battle, armed with water bottles filled with paint, extra packets of powdered paint and disposable clothes on our anxious bodies. We found the main crowd of revelers accompanied by drummers who were already synched into a rollercoaster rhythm that could have been going days. We had a gentle initiation from a kind local who gently smeared wet paint on our faces. Niki naively returned the favour by throwing a handful of dry paint powder into the blokes face and unfortunate eyes from point blank range. The guy was shaken and calm despite losing his eyesight for a minute or two. His parting advice was to use water which we duly and ashamedly took on board. We were quickly enveloped in the throng and the pounding rhythms. Blokes with buckets of paint chucking them over the crowd, people squirting all colours of the rainbow in my face, little kid tugging at my shirt asking for a piggy back so i oblige, more paint, more dancing, kid is squeezing my head now and its getting pretty uncomfortable so i try to bounce around a bit more hinting for him to dismount, im getting into it now, shackles are off and more paint smeared on my face feeling like wet sand. But whats that? Ah its pony tailed russian dude in his favourite crisp white shirt he's been wearing for 4 days straight, taking photos of the mob but only enjoying on the periphary, a man comes to him arms outstretched and palms open but pony tail ducks and weaves like a middle weight and turns inside, more take notice of the kerfuffle like the beginnings of a shark feeding frenzy, more come at him now and he's ducking and weaving like mohammed ali. One guy grabs an arm and he slips out of his wet purple hands but he can only struggle so much, like a python tightening its grip on its prey, the more he struggleds the worse it becomes, and its over in seconds, a gang of multicoloured arms and hands envelop him and he comes out with the face of a downtrodden devil and he wont be wearing that shirt again. Karma indeed.

After celebrating holi and several frustrating showers later we rented a scooter and headed for the hanuman temple atop a 576 or so set of steps. The roads were smooth and quiet (by indian standards) and cruising through the paddy fields to the templr and back was great fun. Im not quite max biaggi just yet. Aftet the incredibly testing ascent to the temple in baking hot air and scorching sun we were greeted by a subset of the macaque tribe who claim residency around the temple (hanuman is the monkey god and these fellas are his reincarnation or something). Anyway hanuman must have liked innate plastic objects as a little one took great joy in snatching mine out of my hands to fiddle with it and show off to his mum on the other wall. The temple itself is basic but the views were incredible. The monkeys were fairly tame but like in vattakanal theres always a shifty and pretty chunky alpha male on the loose to make sure you keep your wits about yourself. Unfortunately my phone ran out of juice so i couldnt take any photos. Niki has a couple on facebook so for those that know please check them out.