Ralph the Wonder Llama

Having cultivated the art of doing very little for two and a half weeks, it was time for a trip. I decided to visit the 14th-16th Century ruins of Hampi, the capital of the old Hindu empire of Prince Harihararaya. The site is a major attraction in this part of the world and was busy with both local and foreign visitors, the more so as I arrived just after the conclusion of a two-day festival which drew 25,000 visitors to this small – and, it turns out, less easy to get to than it ought to be – town.

In fact, “town” is almost overstating the case. Hampi consists of little more than a central main bazaar of a few blocks plus a main street that is a paragon of tat, plus an extended tail either side of restaurants and guest houses along the river. In its 16th Century heyday, half a million people lived here. Which must have made getting a chai of a morning a bit of a mare.

Anyway, Hampi can be reached in a number of ways, but my recommendation would be to go by train. I went by bus, amongst other things, and it managed to take 15.5 hours each way, for various reasons with which I shall bore you anon. Think “overnight express private bus” and you might conjure an image of air conditioned comfort, deeply padded lie-flat recliners, privacy screens and a silky smooth ride. Now forget all that and remember where you are. Instead think more along the lines of a cross between a cut-up version of the interior of a third class sleeper car from Indian Railways and a knackered-up, tin-plate box on wheels that looks like it’s been lashed together out of very second hand meccano by a gang of one-armed blind maniacs. Add a blown exhaust. Add thirty or so passengers in various states of disrepair. Add 25-35 degrees of heat depending on time of day. Add comedy clown spring suspension. That’s it. Very good. Now drive the whole thing overnight for 12 (scheduled) hours over some of the finest road-ridden potholes this side of Edinburgh, and you’re as good as there.

Except of course we weren’t. We awoke (well, failed to sleep in the light of a new day…) on the morning of the 30th January to find ourselves 30km out of Hampi after twelve hours’ driving, going absolutely nowhere. Up ahead, a four-bus crash had brought everything for miles to a halt. It was 10:00. It was getting warm. It didn’t take too long to conclude that we would spend the rest of the day here, and possibly die, if nothing was done. As sheep figuring out the whole cattle-grid thing, the bus was deserted within a matter of minutes of someone figuring out that there was a back road down which rickshaws could navigate. Rs900 split three ways, and hour and a half, adding a significant percentage in time and cost to the journey, but at least we’d get there. So that’s what we did.

As we drove through the back roads and villages that marked the long way round to Hampi, we learned (from Ben from South West London) that this area had another claim to fame as the backdrop to the Flintstones film. It was easy to see why. Nowhere else have I seen a landscape like it. Huge (I mean house-sized and upwards) boulders scattered in great heaps littered the countryside, of such dimensions that one doubted one’s own eyes. They are so incongruously large that they look to have been designed to a similar spec as used by Spinal Tap for their interpretation of Stonehenge. Only in reverse. Sort of thing. You know what I mean. Like, none more big.

After finally gaining admittance to the town, having been relieved of rs20 by a very zealous young man who claimed to be collecting parking and tourist-delivery tolls for the government (after, let it not go unsaid, some incredulous protest, especially from Yellana, who claimed to be chilled out after two months in India, but whose relaxation extended only as far as yelling “you’re a fucking crook” at the, admittedly annoying, man – “no fucking madam, just paying” – I’d hate to see her when she’s tense). His boss came over to explain, in no uncertain terms, that he’d “paid six lakh [600,000] rupees for this government contract” and was determined to enforce it to the maximum. We said we didn’t care what he’d paid. He said he did and was very concerned to retrieve a small part of it from our driver. Or more accurately, us. As so often here, fighting points of principal can quickly get you nowhere at all, since these principals are your own business, and you still owe rs20. We gave in disgracefully.

And so, finally, after 15 hours, to Hampi. I found my hotel which, it turns out, is on the “wrong” side of the river (south, unusually). I knew this, inasmuch as I had spoken to folk in Agonda who told me the best, most relaxed places were north, away from the bustle of the bazaar. I, however, had forgotten this. Nor had I checked the LP properly which would have reminded me. It was good advice which I just didn’t take – which isn’t ironic at all, just a bit daft. Take note, Ms Morrissette. There will be a test. Still, it was adequate, well located for sights, and it only took me two days to figure out the bathroom light switch.

After a slap-up feed at the Mango Tree, which was to be my eaterie of choice for the duration, I got an early night with the intention of being up early for pre-heatwave ruin-bashing (as it were – actually they discourage that sort of thing these days. The Vittala Temple has musical pillars carved from solid stone that, when struck with sandalwood poles, produce individual, scaled notes:

These are now out of bounds to tourists who inflicted much damage upon them by “playing” them with other bits of rock which, suffice to say, did little for the overall tuning…) If I thought I was going to beat the crowds, though, I was wrong. Hampi Main Bazaar is a surprisingly busy place at 07:00, and you get the extra benefit of trying to avoid smoke from the small but carcinogenic rubbish fires that coalesce along the street verge. Children play next to them. It is vaguely disturbing, even for here.

And so began two fairly solid days of dedicated temple and tomb visitations, as it were, across a widespread site in this boulder-wonderland. Some of it is in remarkably good condition, especially the Vitalla and the Zenana and Elephant Stables. Lots of it is very old, too. Most impressive is the scale, however. Individual buildings, such as the Virupaksha Temple, are large and imposing enough:

but the whole site spreads for many square kilometres, making any sort of comprehensive survey a major exercise. So I walked over hills, along paths, crossed rivers in coracles, took autos to the foot of the Hanuman Temple hill (571 steps, 15 minutes, piece of cake):

fed bananas to monkeys, ate breakfast of masala dosa and idlis at the women’s co-op Hoova Cafe (which, erm, didn’t suck at all, it was very good) and had chai with the local electrician. In between times I drank an awful lot of water, walked a lot, sweated a lot, drank some nice lassis (Hampi, being such an important religious site, is dry and strictly vegetarian) and ate some good food. Also I met Lakshmi, the temple elephant:

who blesses visitors on the head with her trunk for the price of a coin. I also did my best (not very well) to avoid gathering a large crowd and having my picture forcibly taken while saying “hello” to almost infinite numbers of childs on school trips and facing the “Empire vs Democracy Inquisition” twice, albeit in friendly fashion. I also reflected that it seemed odd to see a site where 500 year-old carvings depict horse traders from lands as far afield as Europe, China and the Middle East mixing in everyday life with the locals, when here was I attracting almost more attention than the Actual History simply by dint of being foreign. Small towns for you, I guess.

After a couple of days, I’d had about enough. I was all templed out – ruined, you might say. And I quite like this sort of thing, too. But it’s a bit exhausting after a while, in that amount of heat, with a fairly significant hassle factor, and after not terribly long I feel like I’m in one of the major cities and need to get away to some tranquility again. Let me fly back to the placid beach of Agonda, and relative sanity and calm.

Except “fly” wasn’t quite going to be accurate on the return journey, either. Due to seat mix-ups, I ended up (for a small fee) with a double bunk, pretty much the only way to ensure any level of comfort. Or less discomfort, anyway. A good thing too, as I was to need it for longer than anticipated. All was going relatively well, if you discount the rather unfortunate incident at a chai stop where a rather clumsy member of staff waved his arm into my elbow, projecting half a cup of steaming chai into my right eye. I was less than pleased. However, despite the fact that I’d told the man herding passengers that I was getting off at Chaudi, and repeated this when he nudged me at the stop for Palolem (one before mine and most certainly not, as he was thenceforth to contest, one and the same place). After another half an hour my sense of impending doom was realised when he told me that Chaudi was, in his world, Palolem, and that I should have got off there. I must have been asleep, he said, though I didn’t realise I was such a lucid conversationalist when comatose, nor why he should have chosen to speak to someone who was asleep, let alone actually asleep at any point anyway. So he let me off at Margao, 28 km north of where I should have been.

“So how do I get back from here?”
“Over the road. Local bus to Chaudi.”
“Not Palolem?”
“No. Chaudi. Local bus.”
“So Chaudi and Palolem aren’t the same place?”
“Yes. Same place.”
“No – they are different places. Are you telling me I got on this bus at Palolem?”
“Yes.”
“No. I got on at Chaudi.”
“Same place. You go to Chaudi. Local bus.”
“So they are different!”
“Chaudi local capital of Canacona district. Palolem in Canacona. Same place. You go.”

I went. The principal had exhausted itself. Nothing had changed. I still had to get back to Chaudi.

So I caught a local bus back to Chaudi (which is about 6km north of Palolem, if you want to find it on the map…) on a bus containing approximately 35 of the permitted 11 standing passengers at any given point, along with baskets of roaming pineapples that thunked around the floor at each wallowingly negotiated corner and a vast number of schoolchildren, who presumably only count as a third each. I reached Chaudi, went to the bank, and got an auto back to Agonda two-and-a-half hours later than necessary and fell into bed.

Now, five hours later, my battery (and that of my laptop) is in need of a recharge, and I am in need of a beer. So I bid you farewell for now, and prepare to head to the Nepalese multi-storey bamboo bar for a sundowner. And probably a pre-sundowner as well.

See? I told you this was hard work.