Hampi and Hyderabad

I have had two amazing weekend trips this past month. One was to the ancient city of Hampi where there is a cute little modern touristy town that has grown up around the ancient temples. The other was to Hyderabad, about as opposite of a place that you can get in India.

Hampi

This was the highlight of my trip so far since visiting the rainforest. It is the ruined remains of the great temple city of the southern Hindi empire that was sacked by the Muslim invaders about 500 years ago. The ruins lay covered by jungle for hundreds of years until the British came to India and rediscovered them. The ruins cover kilometers of area and there is no way to see them all over the course of a short stay. We did get to see some of the highlights though like a giant statue of Ganesh (the elephant headed God), the elephant stables where the royal elephants were dressed, the Vishnu temple full of rows and rows of musical pillars that would have been hit by sticks to make music (blue man group style), and the Lotus Mahal where the queens and the king could relax in their pleasure garden with refreshing water being sprayed onto them.

We spent one very hot day exploring the ruins but the highlight of my trip to Hampi was the adventure a small group of us went on to watch the sunrise from the top of a nearby mountain. We left the hotel at 5:30 in the morning and walked through the town in the dark. There were a surprising amount of people already awake and working, although there were also many people still sleeping outside in beds beside the road. We didn’t really know where we were going but were lucky enough to run into a friendly Indian man who sells fresh chai tea at the top of the mountain every morning. He showed us a route up the side of the mountain where we had to walk up steep steps carved into the smooth rock with the side of the cliff hidden in darkness right beside us. When we reached the top the view was breathtaking and we watched the sun slowly rise out of the mist with a small group of other tourists. We all sat on the roof of an ancient temple and looked down at the mountains, jungle and ruins bellow us. We were also joined by a group of curious monkeys who climbed all around us and stole our plastic chai tea cups to chew on. They were adorable but also a little bit frightening, especially when they came at you to try to steel something. One even jumped on Sam’s backpack to try to get his water bottle.

Monkeys trying to get the last of the chai out of our plastic cups

The whole landscape around Hampi looks like something right out of Indiana Jones or Jerasic Park. There are smooth boulders precariously balanced on each other, palm trees and ruins everywhere. I have to admit that there were many times on our hike back down the mountain that morning that I was signing the Indiana Jones theme song to myself.  Thankfully we took a different and less precarious route back down and I never had to see the steep drops that we had walked so close to on our way up the mountain.

view from the top of the mountain

Some other highlights from my trip to Hampi include:

-          The shopping there was to do in the little touristy village. I finally got good at bartering and bought myself a pair of awesome Nepalese pants (jumping the gun a bit on my plans to visit Nepal).

-          Getting henna done by a young and very talkative women who told us all about her son and his dreams to become a pilot

-          The Mango Tree restaurant where we sat on cushions by the low outdoor tables and soaked up the atmosphere of the nearby river.

-          Watching the sunset over the ruins and the jungle from on top of a rock overhanging a steep cliff

-          Hanging out at a cool restaurant/lounge where there was a hippie jam session going on (India is full of the hippie tourists – I love it!). There was one guy who was playing the djembe and the dijereedoo (haha I have no idea how to spell that) at the same time!

-          Taking a boat ride down the river in a large, flat and round bamboo boat

Hyderabad

Hyderabad is a huge city (the largest we will visit on our trip) that is halfway between the North and South of India. It has a lot of Muslim influence and we got to climb up a tower into an ancient Mosque and visit a really cool ruined fort outside the city that was full of Islamic architecture.

My highlight of visiting this bustling city was wandering through the back streets around the markets and admiring all the bangles, fancy pearl jewelry, jeweled burkas, piles of used sariis, carts full of fruits and vegetables, beef hanging in store windows, etc… There was just so much going on and it was easy to get off the beaten tourist track to see people doing their day to day stuff without having to wander down any deserted looking alleys.

Some other highlight for me included:

-          Going to the horse races. I had never been to horse races before ad it was surprisingly exciting when the horses came thundering by where we were sitting. I bet a whole 50 rupees (the equivalent of $1) on one horse, which I lost. It was weird to be the only group of with people in the stands as well as the only group of unaccompanied women.

-          Taking a boat ride out to a giant statue of the Buddha (so big that the statue sunk while they were trying to transport it out to the middle of the lake) and having supper at the ritziest lakefront restraint I think I have ever eaten in afterwards.

-          Going to a Tollywood movie in a mall near our hotel. Tollywood is like Bollywood except the language is different and specific to the area around Hyderabad. The movie was fantastic! I was over 3 hours long and included an intermission. Even though there were no subtitles and we couldn’t understand what they were saying, it was still possible to follow the plot and enjoy all the amazing music, dancing and corny fighting scenes. Only in a Bollywood/Tollywood movie does the frame cut in the middle of a fight scene to show the character’s sketched as cartoons. I laughed so hard my sides hurt.

Our rickshaw drivers admitted they didn't know where they were going after driving us around for an hour. I took advantage of their break to try to figure stuff out to take this photo.