'Not Bad' and the Temple City

“Not bad” – many say to my travelling.
“En fait” (comme diraient les français), I’ve been travelling quite a lot within South India and I feel happy and realized because of that.
Staying in Bangalore for the weekends is almost depressing – this city is too busy and too stressful.

I hadn’t travelled since August 24th. Too long I know... But that’s when I went to Hampi... :
Hampi (in the same state as the recently renamed Bengaluru – Karnataka) was an amazing experience.
The momentum is gone though... A month and a half has gone now without me telling you anything about it, so I won’t come on to many details.
... So much has been happening that I haven't been managing to 'stop' living to actually tell my friends and family about life :) Apologize me for that.
So 'here comes the sun... txu ru ru ru... here comes the sun... I say: It's alright txu ru ru ru ru ru ru........."

Hampi is the place in India that I visited where SCALE is more obvious and striking.
You’re driven past dozens of temples through majestic piles of round rocks that only an Olympic God could have disposed in such a wonderful way over each other.
You reach peeks where the view invites you to meditate as your eyes get lost in a horizon measuring 360º. The air thickens but feels purer and the hot rocks burn your feet while you jump your way to the promise of an even greater landscape.
At the temples, they put red ink marks on your forehead as you visit and honor the God to which it is dedicated – the mark on your forehead signifies that you’ve been blessed for paying visit to this holly place. You’re invited to leave donations if you want, and also in some places you can buy sweets inside - especially when the God represented is known to like sweets in Hindu Philosophy (like Ganesha, the elephant faced young man).

Hampi is there where on one side of the river, you can find guest-houses, eat meat, drink alcohol… and on the other one, you can’t.
There where you find the smiling same children wanting to take pictures with you anywhere you go.
There where you have to take your shoes off, roll up your trousers, and walk through stopped waters and 'unidentified' mud until you reach the boat that will bring you to the other shore (only until 6 pm!).
There where shopping and sleeping is cheap.
There where you go up hundreds of stairs up a mountain to reach Monkey Temple and find it more than worth it, and then spend hours just amazing at the rocky greeny orangy never-ending landscape... and probably find hardly any monkeys. Others say that they’ve seen dozens of monkeys there, some that they were even followed by them: don’t lose hope! ;)
There where you see how society worked in the East much before any Romans civilized our global village or our Western Jesus started preaching.
(By the way, did you know that Jesus Christ spent more than a decade of his existence in India? – “e esta, hein?”).
There where temples are made out of rock – sometimes you can hardly disguise them in the horizon as they melt into the natural rock mountains.
There where you take sun baths in a deserted lake surronded by the huge round and polished rocks Hampi is made of.
There where you bargain until the end and have five drivers (at a time! :P) making you promise not to forget them - as in any touristic place in South India, actually.

Hadn’t seen old temples as yet. Here you have one at each corner, differently shaped, beautifully carved both on the inside and on the outside.
So so hot! If you go do book a full-day rickshaw to drive you around.
Gonçalo, Me, Jacky, Maria and Ahmed left out of Hampi wanting to come back.
We didn’t know what was expecting us though.

On the train back I lived my biggest challenge in India: but I’ll spare you the details and tell you only that we had literally no seats on a 1000 people train and occupied the worse 2 square meters in Sleeper class.
Having overcome that and its ‘nuances’ in a 10 hour train trip in India (and still avoiding any specifications as they tend to disgust listeners), I feel ready to sleep almost anywhere, with almost any discomfort, smell, ‘company’ or hygiene level.

'Tenho dito.'