Hampi/Vikarabad

I saw a lot of ruins yesterday. I also saw a lot of boulders. That's pretty much what Hampi is all about, so it was a successful day. In the morning I took a little boat across the river and hiked to the "Monkey Temple", which they claimed had 200 monkeys and looked out over the ruins and the current city. At least the part about the view was right. I saw maybe five or ten monkeys, and the temple itself was pathetic. I grabbed some lunch back in town with an Aussie I met at the temple, then headed out for more ruins.

The areas around the ruins are generally fields, where locals grow bananas, beans, rice, and graze their animals. More than once I tried to take a little shortcut through a field, and now my legs have some cuts on them from the spiked plants the locals use as fences. I did see plenty of temples and old buildings, including the old royal elephant stables, where I hid out during an afternoon rain.

I headed out of town, sad to see it go so quickly, and without seeing everything. Hampi is an amazing place. In addition to the actual sights it's nice because despite the influx of tourists, the ruins are so spread out that everywhere you go the most people you see at any one sight is less than a dozen or so. This leads to a very peaceful place.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was my dinner that night. I went to a place where there were a bunch of Indians, figuring it must be good. Well it turned out they were all about to go to a festival. I asked for the thali (a full meal), they said they didn't have that, so I asked what they did have. Their answer: just thali. So I had the thali, served on a banana leaf. The woman brought it out and said it was free, because it was their festival thali. It had some sort of sweets as well as some good lemon saffron rice (and the standard vegetarian curry, plain rice, and sambar). Anyway, it was delicious and my cheapest meal yet (and ever).

Last night I caught the bus to Hospet, and then the train from there to Gutakal, where I changed trains and came to my current location of Vikarabad. There is nothing to see in Vikarabad. It's not on any tourist maps, in any books, and there are no sights as far as I can tell. Why did I come? To catch a train to Aurangabad in order to see some caves. So I have from 9am this morning to 6pm this evening (it's now about 10:30am here) in this random Indian city. I wandered around for an hour to find this internet cafe, and I found a cinema so I'm going to the movies next. I'm not sure what's playing, either 2012 or some random Indian movie (fingers crossed), but it'll kill some time.

Being in a town that apparently never sees any tourists is interesting. I don't get hassled at all by rickshaw drivers, shopkeepers or hotel owners, but everyone stares. In tourist towns I get plenty of stares, but here it seems to be pretty much everyone. It's actually kind of nice to see just a regular town, I don't feel like I'm wasting a day (like I thought I would).