Bellary

Again, Tom slept very well last night but I did not, I’d woken up feeling terrible, so we agreed to just take it easy today. We packed up our things as we were checking out and heading to Gokarna this evening on a night bus, and then made our way to our favourite local place for a Masala Dosa breakfast. Went back to the hostel and chilled out on the day beds enjoying the view of the rice paddies directly in front of our hostel. Just after midday we decided to check out the swimming spot near to our hostel, not having particularly high expectations for it I was really blown away with how beautiful it was when we got there. We enjoyed the warm sunshine and before no time went into the water. Not a crocodile in sight and it was so refreshing! After a little while after chilling out on the rocks and soaking up the sunshine was made our way back to the hostel to chill out for a little while as I still wasn’t feeling 100% and I’d need as much rest as possible as I doubted I’d get any sleep on this night bus.

We decided that we’d pay up as we didn’t want to get held up when it game to leaving. Finally the hostel owner turned up. It was 2295 rupees to pay between us and we tried to pay separately, but as usual, change was an issue. So I paid him first and got change, but then figured that if I just paid for Tom too, we’d get more change as they always round things down here. I asked him to give me another lot of change so me and Tom would figure it out between us. The hostel guy took us both by surprise with what he did next...he said to Tom “hey, give me your money”. He wasn’t prepared to give us the full change without having everything first. He was so aggressive and I asked him if he thought we were going to run away. They guy said no, so I said for him to calm down and not be so rude. Both of us were left shocked by the whole experience and we would certainly be writing a savage review as the hostel made us both ill and it was dirty. This could usually be overlooked if the staff are good, but all of them were money grabbers.

An hour or two had passed and we decided to walk to the shops to get some snacks for our night bus tonight. We got a bag full of snacks and it only cost us £1, total! On our way back we stopped off at our favourite place again for Veggie Thali and it was not a disappointment, it was delicious - we sure were going to miss this place!

We went back to the hostel got our bags said our goodbyes to people (despite most of them heading to Gokarna in the coming days) and we left the hostel and walked the 2.5km back to Hippie island and the exact spot we would be getting the TukTuk to the bus station. The TukTuk obviously didn’t leave at 18:30 like it said it would, but eventually the driver crammed 7 of us into a TukTuk and began to drive into the middle of nowhere. After a bumpy journey through various little towns and driving on the wrong side the of the road we stopped in the central reservation of a motorway, apparently this was the bus station. As he dropped us off the TukTuk driver, who crammed us all into 1 TukTuk instead of two and drove like a psychopath asked us all for tips...the Polish woman in the TukTuk refused saying that we had already paid for the TukTuk, he then turned to George and I who backed her up by saying we would definitely not be tipping, especially as he was quite rude! We waited here for an hour until finally the bus arrived. We threw our bags in the luggage hold and got onboard to find our 2 seats that we booked. However, there were only beds on the bus, so we ended up having to share a single bed...Read more