Everyone is staring at us 🫠

Today we went to Sanapur lake close to Hampi that we really wanted to see. On the way there we passed some wonderful landscapes with coconut and banama palms, sugarcane and rice plantations with the boulderstones in the background. Very beautiful and authentic for Hampi. And yes, rice needs A TON of water. It basically grows in a pond…

When we reached the lake we realized it’s nothing special, it was very bare, hot and creepily empty. We took a few pics and then turned around and sat at the first best cafe for some coffee. Turned out super cozy and we met another guy from the train there. He is Slovakian and traveling the world quite literally. He’s been out for 6 months now and plans to stay for a few more months. He travelled to more than 80 different countries so far and told us all different stories. He visited Jemen before heading to Sri Lanka and now India. He even happened to be in Armenia when the Nagorno-Karabkh conflict was at its worst. He said people were crying on the streets in Armenia and there was no music in the bars. Then he went to Azerbaijan where the vibe was the complete opposite…

The day continued in the village of Sanapur which seems to be a quite rural but a bit hippie area. People were doing their laundry at the river or in buckets in from of their improvised housing. We had lunch at a cozy restaurant called Island Vibes and our American friend from yesterday joined us. Soon after that we parted ways as we had to head to Hubballi to take the train from there back to Goa. Hubballi is the head quarters of Karnataka region and is a very busy city from what we could see in the 5 minutes we spent on the streets.

What really stuck out today were all the stares we received. It is interesting and we find it funny and cute mostly, we say hi or wave to people when we see that they look at us. Getting those stares while driving in tuk tuk felt like being on a catwalk. People would also try to slow down and drive just next to us to be able to observe us more carefully. 😅

But it escalated a lot at the train station in Hubballi where we waited for our train for 2 hours to later learn that it was delayed and they were not announcing by platform until the last minute. We were tired, hungry and stressed. Some beggers approached us and just stood next to us even thoughwe told them to move away. So we kept moving across the station with all the luggage trying to escape that. A lot of young guys also approached and wondered where we’re from and why we’re here. They said they never see tourist in Hubballi. Also no one knows where our counties are so we have started saying that we are from Yugoslavia which helps a bit). At some point there were 10 guys around us just observing us and asking questions. In the end I had to tell them to back off because it was getting claustrophobic.

In the middle of this our stomachs started hurting… we must have eaten something funny. It is not that bad but feels likens defeat that we could go for almost 2 weeks with no symptoms and then the last days it hit us… hope it gets better already tomorrow.

Our train finally came and we fell asleep on our way back to Goa. ❤️Read more