Bellary

We woke up after having a pretty good sleep in our double dorm bed, got a breakfast masala dosa at the restaurant we went to last night and then made our way over to Hippie island, where we would get the ferry to cross the river. However, as we were walking a peculiar man approached us, showing us a scatty piece of paper reading “Ear Doctor”, with some references from his previous happy customers and then started to shove a metal instrument into Tom’s ear and started to pull out wax and show me how dirty his ear was....as Tom had blocked ears anyway from the beaches, he thought he’d ask him to do the other ear whilst he was there. We knew the inevitable demand for money was coming, but as soon as he tried it on we walked off...it was his decision to go into Tom’s war in the first place. We began to walk towards the ferry point and noticed 2 guys walking a different way... we had heard of a way you can just walk across the river without paying so thought that’s what they were doing...indeed it was. They showed us how to cross, walking through waist level water to get to the other side we came out triumphant having saved ourselves 20 rupees each.

As soon as we got to the other side we were hounded by TukTuk drivers trying to sell us a tour of the temples to which we politely said no to as we were going to get a moped and drive round ourselves...(we were originally going to rent a moped from our hostel and drive round to the other side but we were informed that it’s was forbidden to take a moped from this side of the river over to the other side and we would have to get a moped there). We looked around the street for a little while trying to find somewhere to rent a moped from (with a hundred TukTuk drivers pestering us at each second) and we soon realised there was nowhere to rent mopeds from. We decided to have a few minutes to collect our thoughts and decided what we were going to do, but one TukTuk driver just wouldn’t leave us alone and was insisting on showing us this map of the temples for the 50th time...I was getting really impatient so just said to him “will you just please stop talking!!”...he left with his tail between his legs and we decided to just get a TukTuk tour to show us round the free temples. Eventually, after a lot of negotiation and fake walkaways (our bartering technique) we came to an agreement with a driver to take us round all the free temples for 400 rupees.

We were told the Tuktuk tour would take us around 3 hours, and we’d visit all the free sites in Hampi including hidden tunnels, underground temples, ancient bazaars, ruins, step wells, queens baths, the list went on and on. In the Krishna temple we were both walking around taking in the really well preserved temple when a middle age lady approached us with her daughter lingering behind. The (we assumed) mother started to ask us lots of questions about us; how old are you? What do you do for work? Which country we were from? Do we have wives at home? What qualifications we have? Etc. We soon realised that she was trying to set us up with her daughter, we had heard about this- Indian parents trying to set their children up with Western boys but we just said for them to enjoy their day and carried on.

After about 3 hours of seeing the temples and ruins of the ancient city of Hampi our TukTuk driver told us that we were finished..and I think Tom and I were secretly happy as we were a little templed out. On the drive back the TukTuk driver stopped outside a temple that were having some form of party. It was a colourful, vibrant and noisy affair with free food! We were given a large metal place and presented with a portion of rice and various curries, we sat on a wall adjacent to the temple and ate this tasty food before going up for seconds! Satisfied with the tour and the free lunch our guy managed to get us, was paid him with an extra 100 on top. However, he still requested more and also requested any foreign currency we had as he was collecting... a little cheeky, but nice try!

We then walked to the Hampi Bazaar where I got into negotiations with a woman about buying some vests.m as it was so hot for even T-shirt’s. She practically emptied her entire collection onto her shop floor and I found various different polite ways to tell her each vest she was showing me was awful...I eventually found 2 which would do and managed to get them both for 400, a bargain that I was pretty happy with after she firstly asked me for 1,200! We aimed to walk to the top of a boulder mountain for a cool viewpoint. On the way Tom grabbed a cucumber - the woman initially wanted 20rupees but he got the smallest one for 10. Thinking it would be a nice non spicy meal, the woman then decided she’d sprinkle it with salt and masala powder! We walked on a bit following the river and we sat at a temple for a while to get out of the heat. Soon after an Indian guy came up to us and started talking about wresting and asked for our water (definitely not) and then he asked how we get so white. We both responded saying that we were white people, but he didn’t get it and then asked if we used some sort of special cream...all a bit weird.

We walked through Achyutaraya Temple which was really impressive and dead quiet, so we stayed here a while before climbing the boulder mountain - Matanga Hill. The boulders were massive when you got up close to them and the views were amazing on the climb up. As usual, I entered mountain goat mode and started clambering all over the rocks, jumping from one to another. Tom however has a much stronger sense of self preservation so took a more sensible route up to the top.

After this long day of being in the Tuktuk and doing plenty of waking, we decided to call it a day and head back before sunset, crossing the river on foot to avoid the charge and we walked back to the hostel as the sun went down. There were a few more people at the hostel tonight so we grabbed as many people as we could and went back to our little place for a feast and to get to know people.Read more