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Sunday, 5 December 2010

Today’s Soundtrack: Payola$ – Eyes of a Stranger

Planning 07:30

Spent a strange night of semi-wakefulness, with Eyes of a Stranger on permanent loop in my brain. The courtyard outside my room was lit with a fluorescent light that made me think it was always dawn. Twice I was bitten through the mosquito net on the foot. It was so painful and took so long to subside that I found myself working a huge, knife-wilding mosquito into my dreams. He was waiting for another crack at my toe with the patience of a master burglar. 

At Shanti Guesthouse the tourists are beginning to stir, and I’ve just heard the first horn honk of the morning. Since most of the rooms here are without showers, there’s been a fair bit of wobbly flesh on display as people stagger around with towels and toothbrushes using the shared facillities. Is it because the Indians have already been up for at least an hour at this point that they look so much better put together?   Even though there is technically no booze in this town, the Westerners still look a little shellshocked at finding themselves awake and in Hampi.  Seven o’clock arrives like the start of a race, and suddenly everyone is up and doing things – sweeping, honking, doing that really loud yogic throat clearing thing that sounds like a slow and painful death. It is a show of instant readiness.

I too am a little shellshocked. My eyes have the shadowy look of an undergraduate at finals time; even after I’ve scrubbed off the soot from the road. Can it be that I’ve undone myself with a few too many nips on the whisky I’ve been using as a pothole countermeasure? I’ve got Ian to thank for that particular technique.

So, it occurred to me last night that we were here eight years ago in 2002, and then eight years before that in 1994. It has a kind of biblical symmetry. Means we’ll have to come back in 2018, at the age of forty-seven. Sobering.

For some reason, it seems like you can still get away with this kind of irresponsibility at thirty-nine. My mother intimated as much on the phone last night along with the subtle suggestion that, in one’s forties, perhaps one ought to be doing something a little more worthwhile. I asked what that might be, and we, all three of us, as my dad was on the line, hastened to change the subject.

So today. What of it? I’ve been gazing at the map longingly again. Thought I would have had that knocked out of me, but it would appear not. The route that seems to be calling out to me is a triangle down to Udupi and then back up the NH17 to Goa. I’ve always liked triangles. They seem to confer purpose where perhaps there isn’t any. I don’t feel like rolling back down that same road through Gadag and so on, so maybe a triangle it is.

Problem is, we’re looking at another two days down to Udupi at least. And, if I was going to make it up the coast from Udupi to goa, that would be twelve hours of driving. But it does seem to be the coolest route that I can cobble together from where I am. It just means being gone for a fucking long time. A week, if I were to leave tomorrow. Can’t see that going down well…although as an idea, it’s gaining momentum.

• Hospet to Chitradurga:       92
• Chitradurga – Shimoga:       115
• Shimoga – Someshav:            89
• Someshav – Udupi:            49

= 358 km’s. almost exactly the same as this leg. And bound to be easier given the NH factor hmmm….

Udupi to goa?

Could probably be done in a day if a shove came to a push.

Would probably mean getting right back on it tomorrow….

The Mango Leaf

A lovely (if flyblown) breakfast with cool, hazy views over the Tungabhadra River, easing itself through the boulder-strewn valley that it has spent a lifetime creating.

Speaking just now to Raju from Tirupati and his advice is to check out the caves at Badami, some 140kms to the north. Although this sounds like interesting advice, I can picture a scene, arriving hot, dusty and disappointed by the utter ordinariness of the site. How many times have I travelled many leagues only to gaze at some wondrous sight for a few moments, only to retire to food, beer drinking and the like.   For me, the trip is the drive, and I can already feel the momentum for the Udupi triangle building. (with the benefit of a) hindsight and b) the internet, it looks like I was pretty darn wrong about the impressiveness of the Badami Caves. ed.)

Vittal Temple Complex : 15:01

Strange that I only discover this place on my third visit to Hampi. It’s immense. I think we make it pretty close last time we were here, then we got distracted by something (it was either swimming in the river, or smoking something – possibly both), and that was that.

I’m now sat atop the stone roofs of some ancient stalls which run down the length of the main temple. Looking inside I can see Indian tourists crawling over the various monuments in vast numbers. From what I can see, they are allowed to enter for free. The cost for foreign tourists is 250 rupees. Thankfully, I ran into Giri, who sold me a map and a guidebook for 20 rupees and pointed out the overgrown path that leads up here, affording a lovely view of the stone chariot that I’d really wanted to see. And, provided I don’t break my neck or my laptop on the descent: all for the kind of very low price which I am developing a fondness for.

Travelling with children, you just expect to haemorrhage money and bear it with good humour. While travelling alone, you take a small delight in the little savings you make here and there. For example, the good-natured haggle I had over lunch, when the small chai stand tried to hit me for sixty rupees for two plates of idli, some fried chillies and a cup of tea (I was hungry). Having watched a number of transactions in coinage, I was a little surprised by what, by Indian standards, is a whopping tab (by Western standards, it’s 90p). More interested than anything, i asked the prices for each item, and, even allowing for a 15 rupee cup of tea (outrageous!), they couldn’t get things to add up to sixty. It didn’t help that I had clocked the guy before me paying ten for his idli. When I pointed this out, the chai lady held up her hands with a laugh and looked at her husband, as though to say ‘the stupid tourist isn’t quite as stupid as we thought!’ and then refunded me fifty from a hundred. Rather than feel like I hassled some poor people out of ten rupees they could have used (which may have been closer to the truth), I walked away a little bit chuffed at successfully dodging the bumbling idiot label that they seemed so eager to stick me with.

Shanti Guest House: 22:42

That rarest of al things: a night to myself with no beer, web or child-shaped diversions (it turns out that beer is illegal in Hampi since it became a World Heritage Site four years ago) and there’s just the one street to roam in. It all makes for a pretty chilled end to one of the loveliest days in recent memory.

Following on from Vittal, I took a left out of the complex and pootled down some back roads through mounds of shattered red boulders. After a few wrong turns up gravel roads and into banana fields(encouraged by a local shepherd woman) I finally emerged at a nameless village and took a right back towards Hampi, which I knew to be about ten or fifteen kilometers away.

About halfway back, I saw a sign for a Hanuman temple up a steep hill and decided to take my chances. As the sun began to sink, and the colours bled to red, I sat on the stone floor of the temple and was lost for a time in the devotional songs of some dueling vocalists, who were putting on a performance several hours in duration for an elderly lady, myself and whatever gods happened to be calling in at that point. Then I wandered over to talk to a rather crazed looking chubby Baba who kept his trident neatly rolled in a felt sleeve. He pointed at me and laughed with his friends, then abruptly called for tea for all of us and lost interest, falling silent and sitting like a pyramid on beefy buttocks. Just as I was about to leave one of the sadhus pointed to the back of the temple and simply said “sunset point?”

I followed his finger up the hill behind the temple and through a tiny gate in the surrounding white wall. I was instantly greeted by a sadhu with a misshapen back and another who was tending a tiny shiva temple hewn out of the rock. I got the impression this was the real temple, and the one with the music and the offerings and the noise was just some kind of cover.

After going through the usual address exchange, gift to the God, and the like, I was free to roam the hillside, which was bathed in the orange light of the setting sun and afforded views over all the surrounding countryside.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon there, only coming down when the sun had almost set. And thence to a dinner of momos, a single contraband rum and coke, and the Count of Monte Cristo.

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