Hampi: Hippie world

It has been a while since I have blogged, and this is for a simple reason: time has slowed down considerably over the last couple of weeks.

After spending a while in the hills of southern India, my friend Sandra and I decided that it was time to head towards places that are a bit touristier. This is why we decided to travel to Hampi, in Karnataka.  The road by bus was going to take about 20 hours, and we had to change buses in Mysore, which allowed us to go and see a sound and light show at the magnificent palace of this city. The show was alright, although it was all in Hindi and with a lot of spoken words. But seeing this palace being lit at night was a sight worth seeing.

Our journey to Hampi was in an overnight bus and we arrived there ore breakfast. Hampi is a town located next to a river, with acres of antique temples around it. More interestingly, the area is covered with massive piles of boulders, brought there by thousands of years of volcanic activity and erosion. This makes the landscape looking like you are in another world…

We first stayed on the Hampi town side of the river, until we noticed in the evening that dozens of people were crossing the river by boat to go and sleep on the other side. Therefore, we decided to do the same on the next day and arrived in a place that is not India anymore. Hundreds of young people, mainly French and Israelis, were staying there. Lots of them were hippies (or trying to be…), not doing much except playing guitar and smoking marijuana. It is funny to think that these people think themselves as free spirits when they pack themselves in places where everything is made for tourism, even though it is not high-end resorts and all that. I was first staying in a guesthouse, sleeping in massive tipi for a few nights as it was the dorm room there, which was funny, but not really quiet… Then, I moved to a proper room to try to get some sleep, and also because I could not stand hearing the three same tunes being played every hour by those hippies.

We met a group of cool guys from France: two brothers traveling by motorbike (Royal Enfield of course), Max and Julien, and another one called Jimmy. We spent a good time altogether, riding mopeds on the local roads, going to a nearby lake to bathe, or to a temple on top a hill to see sunset. A week passed that way and then, we decided to move on to Goa with Max and Julien, in order to get a feel of the party scene and to get a bit further from what is “real India”.

Take care,

Matt

A few pictures for your keen eyes:

The Palace of Mysore

 The Palace, again...

View of the landscape in Hampi 

Sunset in Hampi 

The rocks of Hampi during the day 

 A small lake surrounded by rocks