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  • Day 51

    Human Again - It's Scooter Time!

    January 8, 2019 in India ⋅ ☀️ 27 °C

    Finally I woke up clicking my heels ready for a day out! But.. Guess what, Will had a crazy fever last night so let's say it wasn't a great night sleep. The plan for the day is actually a tad busier than I would have wanted as we are leaving Hampi, but we have to leave at some point so today is the day. We have pretty much the whole day to enjoy Hampi before catching our sleeper train to Bangalore so we first went for breakfast with Sam and Tes and I was sooo excited to eat. I ordered veg and egg dosa and Will ordered veg pakoda and masala dosa. Then Will insisted he wanted to try driving a manual bike before he goes home, so we rented one. At first I must admit I was pretty scared but I soon realised it was just like being on a normal scooter, albeit a bit clunky with Will getting used to gear changes.

    We basically went the same route as the other day around the local little town, along the rice fields to the lake and then back. We saw some huge white bodied and black headed birds called Blackheaded Ibis, plenty of kingfishers, Bee-eaters, Egrets and much much more.

    Unfortunately we then had to get some late lunch before heading back to the campsite. As we got to the campsite we realised that everyone was sick! They had all been at the campsite all day being ill. I felt so bad for them and fully understood their pain.

    We quickly packed up, jumped on the bike and headed to the ferry terminal. As always travel can't go exactly as planned... There is a public transport strike so the buses aren't running. Obviously the rickshaw mafia became even more irritating as we got off the boat informing us of this and that they have now doubled the rate. Luckily for us we had left plenty of time to allow for such problems and there were 7 of us so there was plenty of time and room for bargaining. I just made sure that everyone was happy to go for some dinner first so we could let the rickshaw drivers sweat it out. They had openly told us that they were taking advantage of tourists in need to get a train and so we would just have to pay. I don't think any of them know me very well. We had swarms of tuk tuk drivers walk along with us each of them telling us there's no buses and that we must take their offer. I calmly said no thank you we are going for dinner and then we will go. This made them so irrate (to be honest I don't really know why...). So we did exactly that. We went for dinner at the bus stand amongst all the rickshaw vultures. Each time they tried to negotiate pricing I strictly asked them to go away and that we were eating, they soon realised they would get zero business if they carried on. Just as we finished one guy walked past me and matched the offer I asked for so we got up and went 😊 Oh the power of time.

    We arrived at the station with plenty of time to spare and said our goodbyes to Sam and Tes. Mattay and Anna were catching the same train as me so we all just chilled and eventually got on our train where I jumped straight into bed.
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