happy in hampi

we heard about hampi from another traveller who described it as a cross between a star wars set, indiana jones on acid. hundreds of semi ruined temples amongst a amazing space landscape, with boulders strewn everywhere, even the houses are built between and over them.

we got across the river using old coracle boats, i wanted to show the man how to paddle, but he did a good enough job considering we had 20 people in one boat, others had motorbikes in.

we cycled around the town and surrounding villages by bikes,

fi fed the temple elephant (no she really did!), lakshmi the elephants name was, pretty quickly a banana went up lakshmi's trunk, and then her trunk went in fi's bag for a nose around for afters.

meanwhile, i observed a new truck being blessed outside the temple by a guru - the truck was painted and splashed and all hell broke loose when the sound system came on. people chasing monkeys who stole the offerings to the gods.. learning from the monkeyrats obviously..

we had a bit of a fruit frenzy ourselves on the roof top of our homestay, watermelon, papaya and bananas.. its great being able to eat whole tropical fruit everyday

we found a great bar with hammocks and cold beer in, played the sasha cd we love and everything was right again in the world.. ahh