Hello fellow travellers! We are driving without our seatbelts -- no spell check, grammar check, nothin'. Old school IE style. This is a sort of apology/trailer. We have no pictures. Apologies. Our massive adventures, in all their bit tonnage, are simply too large for the internets available in these parts of the world, and the people who run their internet cafes. Our periodicity is changing.
However. We have secreted away some pictures, the Lost Pictures, along with the New Pictures, with a courier who is heading to USA under cover of night, day, and autumn to deliver these microfiche encoded photos to the good men and women of the free world, and the bloggers who describe these photos.
Rest assured we are having fun. We have taken Mr. Toad's Wild Tea Ride, spoken with monsters, traveled to strange planets, trekked, explored God's country, and so on... you get the general idea, but you don't have any details yet. Or evidence. So stay tuned for all sorts of things your mother wants you to do, and some she doesn't!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Goa Goa Dancer
Ah, yes. We wake up one morning and find ourselves magically transported to Panjim, in Goa. After shaking our magic fairy dust encrusted heads, and taking a shower to ensure my Tet is completely clean, we realize how we came here. It was by train, bus, autorickshaw, legs, and your basic traveller's ingenuity.
In turns out many people are using the Lonely Planet as a travel guide book. This is a natural, ecological, process that slowly, and happily, transforms us all into slightly stupider, and more cow like, versions of ourselves. Not that there's anything wrong with cows. We have come to love them very dearly. Oh so dearly. But there's time to talk about that later. I made the Lonely Planet endorsed trek from guesthouse to guesthouse, to find them all, naturally, totally full. Along the way I made friends with two Tres Terrific Travellers from Belgique, Nathalie, and her daughter Marie. We join forces, forming a powerful robot less two, and take a well priced room for five travellers, in anticipation of Alex and Yotam's arrival. We also play games with tense and plurality. It's only natural that we go royal, and then revert to the proper usage.
We have arrived in Panjim just in time to meet Alex the next morning, a new character on the exotic roadshow that is Phases Crossed, who will be spending two months with us in India. He arrives in sunny Goa after 1.5 days or so of travel from Oakland's perma-autumn. The meet point is the west end of Panjim's footbridge.
Depicted above in an illustration that clearly shows the artist's understanding of expression and color, is Marie, 11, and Alex, n/a. Marie speaks un petit English, stretching our French language skills to their tenuous limits, along with our pantomime repertoire. Marie takes to the game Go quickly, and she is a wicked Uno player.
Alex and I explore the colorful market, and then go in search of food.
Above we have Alex, doing what Alex does, which is draw. We have just finished our meal, cross breeze included at no extra cost. Alex asked me if there was an implicit zero on the menu -- no! Everything really is that cheap here. Chai is 4 or 5 Rupees -- about 12 cents.
Goa is a former Portugese colony on the west coast of India. It is quite different from the rest of India which we have seen. Architecturally, for one thing, there is less dust. In Panjim, the paved road comes right up to the paved sidewalk, which touches the buildings directly. Feels more European. Unlike other Indian cities we have visited, which have paved roads, lined with a dusty, earthy lanes filled with everything, and architectural structures set further back. This feels more like Europe. And it's much more Roman Catholic than the rest of India. They eat more meat here. Portugal left Goa in the 60's, and Panjim does feels a bit like an underpowered, but nonetheless transformative, time machine.
We head to Old Goa, inland a bit, to see the sights and smell the smells. Old Goa was the original Portuguese colony in Goa, and is filled with huge churches. Huge. Big. Large.
Along the way we meet this man, pictured above, who will be having his 100th birthday in March. Invited to the party, we are. He is from Goa, and lived in Pakistan before the partition, after which he moved to Delhi. We inquire how one can live to be so old, but are refused a response, perhaps because of certain language barriers. He used to play Western music in clubs. He sings a song in English for us. We infer that singing perhaps, is the true secret to longevity.
What we have here is a work process that feels like some sort of cellular machinery. This is a handful of what is actually about 30 women moving dirt out of an archaeological dig of an old church. Each woman only walks about 5 feet, and hands, or heads, her bucket to the next woman in the line. The full buckets travel down, and the empty ones up. It is, amazing.
Yotam magically appears, as foretold by the prophecy, at the west end of the very same footbridge two days later. This is not long after the SIGGRAPH paper due date, also, perhaps not coincidentally, just in time for Goa's big carnival.
He comes bearing this bag, redefining the word small in the context of travel bags, for me and everyone in a 100 foot radius. What we have here is a bag made of ultralight nano-wool fibers, harvested from a sizable contingent of nano-sheep. He is clearly ready to go Pro. Perhaps next time I will be so efficient.
This should come as no surprise to me, or any of our readers, but the Brazilian President was in attendance for the upcoming Goa carnival, along with a Brazilian delegation of dancers, floats, clowns, and other carnival paraphernalia.
The carnival is too much for our tired travelers. After waiting hours and hours for a good seat, then hours and hours for the late start, we are overcome with fatigue. But it is fun. Maggi chicken cubes are distributed to the audience by the Maggi float. Excellent.
Above is a hard core biker chick from Europe. She looks to be in her early 60s and has bicycled from Turkey to India. Oh yeah, she went around Iran and Pakistan. She's going to Thailand and China.
After separating from our European travel companions, we head south to Agonda, a sleepy village on Goa's coast. We meet many interesting characters and learn a great many life lessons here.
Can you spot the two out of place elements in the above photograph? We love the public buses. They have so much style.
Above is Alex at breakfast in our guest house. Every day our routine is to get up at around 7:30, bathe and play in the ocean from 8:30-9:30, shower, and have a royal breakfast at our guest house. Masala omelet, butter toast, fruit salad, and chai, for those who imbibe upon the addictive substance. We meant to provide some visual evidence, but were consumed in a culinary trance each and every morning the food appeared. The cost of the breakfast, once we do all the accounting, is the same as the cost of our room.
Above, at left, we have Yotam taking a beach breakdancing lesson from some Norwegian travelers. He's pretty good, eh? Judo is good practice, apparently. At right we have one of the many highly friendly locals who frequent our beach showing off his magical powers of plant summoning.
The family who runs our guest house, Eldfra, is super sweet. The rooms are simple and clean, and we aren't far from the beach. It feels like staying with your grandparents, they are so kind. They have two nice boys.
Here is some documentation of an important historical moment. The first time any of us have set foot in this sea. We're not sure if it's the Indian or Arabian sea, but either way, it's a first.
Palolem is the nearest super touristy beach, from which the cows below are sampled. Apparently in the 80s it was very relaxed, but has become a fully fleshed out town, with a complete tourist ecosystem, with the foreigners as some kind of basic algae upon which everything else feeds. It feels a little bit like paradise crossed with Haight Street, Burning Man, and an Indian city. It's a Scene with a lovely backdrop, but we're really glad we aren't staying there.
Completing the pastoral scene at Agonda is the exotic wildlife. Pigs. Cows. I love cows. The cows I come to adore more and more each day. I think, maybe, it is their simple existence. They just are. The cows simply are everywhere. In the road. On the beach. Sleeping. Eating. Looking. Not doing much. Chewing. They are so peaceful and calm, no matter where they are. It is an ultimate carefree, relaxed, existence. We find it very inspiring.
The pigs are really nice, too. They are so expressive and busy. Wandering around, emerging from some bushes, and then wandering off on a footpath, just as quickly as they arrive. Always looking. The pigs notice you a bit more. I think they are the cutest things ever. Perhaps it is their industriousness and expressiveness. They just look so strange, and so smart, and so cute -- they always appear to me to be small people wearing super expressive pig masks. I can't help it, it's just what I see every time I look at one.
With a sample size of n=3, I have come to an important conclusion that medical scientists will no doubt find invaluable. After arriving in India, I was quite congested for about a week. Not really sick, just a bit of a cold for a few days, but some serious congestion. Now I am clear as the Agonda sky, and Yotam and Alex are suffering their first week of congestion, as all the indigenous flora sets up shop in their bodies. This process, however, makes us strong and able to consume some curries that would otherwise rout our digestive flora, avoiding some strange gastronomical and digestive side effects whose details are best not entertained here.
Taking advantage of our time here, we go to a nearby nature preserve. Lots of animals are advertised. We are told though that mostly what we'll see is trees, which we do. The trees are pretty neat, though. We do see some monkeys. We also walk about one thousand kilometers. We are hard core.
Above, you can see Yotam standing under a really curious tree. Curious? Next to this picture is another one. In that picture, you can see Yotam on a very tall ladder on a very tall tree. At top, is a tiny tree house for observing more trees.
We also visit a pepper plantation. Pepper is a vine, actually. Above you can see it growing up a beetle nut tree. That's how they grow it here. This is actually a really quiet budget resort we are visiting in the above two pics that is near Agonda.
Now we are off to Kerala, which we understand to be a land of great natural beauty, snake worship, delicious food, and some of the oldest naval trading posts in the world.
In turns out many people are using the Lonely Planet as a travel guide book. This is a natural, ecological, process that slowly, and happily, transforms us all into slightly stupider, and more cow like, versions of ourselves. Not that there's anything wrong with cows. We have come to love them very dearly. Oh so dearly. But there's time to talk about that later. I made the Lonely Planet endorsed trek from guesthouse to guesthouse, to find them all, naturally, totally full. Along the way I made friends with two Tres Terrific Travellers from Belgique, Nathalie, and her daughter Marie. We join forces, forming a powerful robot less two, and take a well priced room for five travellers, in anticipation of Alex and Yotam's arrival. We also play games with tense and plurality. It's only natural that we go royal, and then revert to the proper usage.
We have arrived in Panjim just in time to meet Alex the next morning, a new character on the exotic roadshow that is Phases Crossed, who will be spending two months with us in India. He arrives in sunny Goa after 1.5 days or so of travel from Oakland's perma-autumn. The meet point is the west end of Panjim's footbridge.
Depicted above in an illustration that clearly shows the artist's understanding of expression and color, is Marie, 11, and Alex, n/a. Marie speaks un petit English, stretching our French language skills to their tenuous limits, along with our pantomime repertoire. Marie takes to the game Go quickly, and she is a wicked Uno player.
Alex and I explore the colorful market, and then go in search of food.
Above we have Alex, doing what Alex does, which is draw. We have just finished our meal, cross breeze included at no extra cost. Alex asked me if there was an implicit zero on the menu -- no! Everything really is that cheap here. Chai is 4 or 5 Rupees -- about 12 cents.
Goa is a former Portugese colony on the west coast of India. It is quite different from the rest of India which we have seen. Architecturally, for one thing, there is less dust. In Panjim, the paved road comes right up to the paved sidewalk, which touches the buildings directly. Feels more European. Unlike other Indian cities we have visited, which have paved roads, lined with a dusty, earthy lanes filled with everything, and architectural structures set further back. This feels more like Europe. And it's much more Roman Catholic than the rest of India. They eat more meat here. Portugal left Goa in the 60's, and Panjim does feels a bit like an underpowered, but nonetheless transformative, time machine.
We head to Old Goa, inland a bit, to see the sights and smell the smells. Old Goa was the original Portuguese colony in Goa, and is filled with huge churches. Huge. Big. Large.
Along the way we meet this man, pictured above, who will be having his 100th birthday in March. Invited to the party, we are. He is from Goa, and lived in Pakistan before the partition, after which he moved to Delhi. We inquire how one can live to be so old, but are refused a response, perhaps because of certain language barriers. He used to play Western music in clubs. He sings a song in English for us. We infer that singing perhaps, is the true secret to longevity.
What we have here is a work process that feels like some sort of cellular machinery. This is a handful of what is actually about 30 women moving dirt out of an archaeological dig of an old church. Each woman only walks about 5 feet, and hands, or heads, her bucket to the next woman in the line. The full buckets travel down, and the empty ones up. It is, amazing.
Yotam magically appears, as foretold by the prophecy, at the west end of the very same footbridge two days later. This is not long after the SIGGRAPH paper due date, also, perhaps not coincidentally, just in time for Goa's big carnival.
He comes bearing this bag, redefining the word small in the context of travel bags, for me and everyone in a 100 foot radius. What we have here is a bag made of ultralight nano-wool fibers, harvested from a sizable contingent of nano-sheep. He is clearly ready to go Pro. Perhaps next time I will be so efficient.
This should come as no surprise to me, or any of our readers, but the Brazilian President was in attendance for the upcoming Goa carnival, along with a Brazilian delegation of dancers, floats, clowns, and other carnival paraphernalia.
The carnival is too much for our tired travelers. After waiting hours and hours for a good seat, then hours and hours for the late start, we are overcome with fatigue. But it is fun. Maggi chicken cubes are distributed to the audience by the Maggi float. Excellent.
Above is a hard core biker chick from Europe. She looks to be in her early 60s and has bicycled from Turkey to India. Oh yeah, she went around Iran and Pakistan. She's going to Thailand and China.
After separating from our European travel companions, we head south to Agonda, a sleepy village on Goa's coast. We meet many interesting characters and learn a great many life lessons here.
Can you spot the two out of place elements in the above photograph? We love the public buses. They have so much style.
Above is Alex at breakfast in our guest house. Every day our routine is to get up at around 7:30, bathe and play in the ocean from 8:30-9:30, shower, and have a royal breakfast at our guest house. Masala omelet, butter toast, fruit salad, and chai, for those who imbibe upon the addictive substance. We meant to provide some visual evidence, but were consumed in a culinary trance each and every morning the food appeared. The cost of the breakfast, once we do all the accounting, is the same as the cost of our room.
Above, at left, we have Yotam taking a beach breakdancing lesson from some Norwegian travelers. He's pretty good, eh? Judo is good practice, apparently. At right we have one of the many highly friendly locals who frequent our beach showing off his magical powers of plant summoning.
The family who runs our guest house, Eldfra, is super sweet. The rooms are simple and clean, and we aren't far from the beach. It feels like staying with your grandparents, they are so kind. They have two nice boys.
Here is some documentation of an important historical moment. The first time any of us have set foot in this sea. We're not sure if it's the Indian or Arabian sea, but either way, it's a first.
Palolem is the nearest super touristy beach, from which the cows below are sampled. Apparently in the 80s it was very relaxed, but has become a fully fleshed out town, with a complete tourist ecosystem, with the foreigners as some kind of basic algae upon which everything else feeds. It feels a little bit like paradise crossed with Haight Street, Burning Man, and an Indian city. It's a Scene with a lovely backdrop, but we're really glad we aren't staying there.
Completing the pastoral scene at Agonda is the exotic wildlife. Pigs. Cows. I love cows. The cows I come to adore more and more each day. I think, maybe, it is their simple existence. They just are. The cows simply are everywhere. In the road. On the beach. Sleeping. Eating. Looking. Not doing much. Chewing. They are so peaceful and calm, no matter where they are. It is an ultimate carefree, relaxed, existence. We find it very inspiring.
The pigs are really nice, too. They are so expressive and busy. Wandering around, emerging from some bushes, and then wandering off on a footpath, just as quickly as they arrive. Always looking. The pigs notice you a bit more. I think they are the cutest things ever. Perhaps it is their industriousness and expressiveness. They just look so strange, and so smart, and so cute -- they always appear to me to be small people wearing super expressive pig masks. I can't help it, it's just what I see every time I look at one.
With a sample size of n=3, I have come to an important conclusion that medical scientists will no doubt find invaluable. After arriving in India, I was quite congested for about a week. Not really sick, just a bit of a cold for a few days, but some serious congestion. Now I am clear as the Agonda sky, and Yotam and Alex are suffering their first week of congestion, as all the indigenous flora sets up shop in their bodies. This process, however, makes us strong and able to consume some curries that would otherwise rout our digestive flora, avoiding some strange gastronomical and digestive side effects whose details are best not entertained here.
Taking advantage of our time here, we go to a nearby nature preserve. Lots of animals are advertised. We are told though that mostly what we'll see is trees, which we do. The trees are pretty neat, though. We do see some monkeys. We also walk about one thousand kilometers. We are hard core.
Above, you can see Yotam standing under a really curious tree. Curious? Next to this picture is another one. In that picture, you can see Yotam on a very tall ladder on a very tall tree. At top, is a tiny tree house for observing more trees.
We also visit a pepper plantation. Pepper is a vine, actually. Above you can see it growing up a beetle nut tree. That's how they grow it here. This is actually a really quiet budget resort we are visiting in the above two pics that is near Agonda.
Now we are off to Kerala, which we understand to be a land of great natural beauty, snake worship, delicious food, and some of the oldest naval trading posts in the world.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Hampi! Hampi! Hampi!
Now the ramblings of this Berkeley prophet all make sense to me. After the recent tremblings in global markets I, too, searched for safer places to store my dollars. Hampi, naturally, is a logical place for us to invest in. The sunsets, rice fields, ancient temples, and fresh air are excellent places for us to spend our quickly devaluing US currency.
Below, we find one of many kiosks in the many bazaar. This one is painted an eye catching blue hue. The daughter of the operator is opening the door to join her mum.
I stay on the other side of the river, which we must reach via motorboat. The older boats, bamboo baskets covered with rice sacks and tar, are no longer in use at this crossing. To cross is 10 Rs each way. At 6pm, the boat magically turns into a pumpkin, leaving princesses and unlucky backpackers both in the lurch. Multiple motorbikes are frequent companions in the smaller, older, boats. Below is our hero, bravely crossing the river by motorized boat.
Hampi is much more quiet and clean than Ahmedadbad. India's formidable population must live primarily in the cities, like people in most contries do. The countryside, then, is quite peaceful.
Here is the initial evidence that we are hot on the trail of the international, but Israeli dominated, backpacker circuit. One can have excellent falafal, schnitzel, Italian, English, and Korean food here. Jachnun, a Yemenite dish, which readers of our blog will remember us eating in Israel, can be found on Shabbat at our guest house restaurant, along with couscous.
Above, the view from my bungalow's porch. Below, the guest house restaurant, which is run by some really sweet Nepalese folks.
At no added cost, we get some lovely sunsets and lazy mornings with all manner of birds playing around. Below, someone returning home from working in the rice fields.
Every evening, we are treated to something like this:
Click through for more pictures. I believe that every evening at least 100 photos are taken of this sunset, meaning about 200mb of sunsets per day, times a 90 day tourist season, is, approximately, 2 gigabytes of photos of these palm trees and sunsets in Hampi every year.
Eager to shower after my long trip, I turn on the hot water and find there is none. I inquire at the front desk, and this steaming bucket shows up. Ok. With the use of a little plastic bucket, whose shape mirrors the large buckets women balance on their heads to transport water home from pumps and wells, I have a hot shower. It isn't as bad as initially expected, and is actually quite nice. One might be cleaner this way, as one focuses first on cleaning, and second on the physical pleasure of hot water. Also, it's nice to be in intimate contact with the physical and material sources and inputs of our lives. Hot water is a luxury for many people on this planet, and it's actual cost and amount consumed is more evident here. The first half of the bucket is for cleaning -- the rest is pure luxury.
One question this man had about Jerusalem is answered, in part, here. Why would people build on top of one another across thousands of years? I mean, really? A look at this piece of documentation, captured on the main drag of the ancient Hampi bazaar, explains a few things. One can see here some contemporary inhabitants of Hampi freely using the architectural remnants of the ancient stone bazaar. This, of course, makes perfect sense. Why build from scratch, when you can just, say, add a roof, and have a home? It's not How Buildings Learn, but How Cities Learn.
On our first outing into the awesome landscape which surrounds Hampi, filled with boulders and 500 year old temples, we encounter this happy family living in a temple. The mom has just returned home with food for her children. Evidence of having read too much Osamu Tezuka manifested, as an entire story instantly sprang to mind. Young puppies, living on the outskirts of town in the shadow of ancient temples, on a mountain top, wait for their mother to return home with milk. Every day they eagerly await her return, and she seeks out the best scraps of foods to convert into healthy milk. Dal for protein, carrots for vision, and milk for strong bones -- she wants her pups to grow up to be strong. Her husband, their dad, died while defending the temple from an aggressive band of exploitive humans and monkeys. She fights criminals in the town, and is, tragically, killed one day. The eldest pup, who witnessed his mom's death, must come to terms with life here, care for his siblings, defend the temples, and continue fighting the evil that invades this holy place.
I like coconuts. So do monkeys. And I love monkeys.
Bikes make me happy. Here is our happy hero, riding a bike, clad in his new shirt. The shirt is a 3 for 1: it protects me from sun, helps the air circulate undernearth my clothing, and adds more color to our modest blog's photographs. Above, I am depicted biking around to various temples in the surrounding rural landscape, which is filled with banana tree & rice plantations, temples, and pilgrims. Lots of Hindus travel to these temples. I visited one mosque, which was beautiful, and found myself totally alone.
This picture illustrates a typical Hindu temple, and gives a sense of what the surrounding landscape looks like. I find the endless hills with boulders on them geologically inexplicable. Well, I have some theories, but they aren't worth sharing.
Many boulders have these markings on them, both on hills, and in structures. Evidence, I think, of how they were cut.
We seek out medical tourism. Here is our protagonist, after having undergone a procedure whereby a large red growth was removed from the facial and cranial parts of his body. The operation, as one can clearly see, was a success. The barber, at right, is 21 or so, and has been working as a barber since the age of 7. The other man let me interrupt his treatment, which can take 30 minutes or more, on account of the meticulous nature of hair removal, massaging, oiling, and so on, so that we could talk. He is a local business man, aged 28, and unmarried -- a bit late for an Indian. But, in a joint Hindu household, the family arranges the marriage, and since it means bringing in a wife and kids, the entire economic circumstances must be considered. Arranged marriages make more sense in this context. A tech worker from Google in Hydrabad informs me, however, that this type of family structure is out of date in most parts of India.
The main Hampi area, and even across the river where I stay, is a bit of a scene. It is filled with backpackers from all over the world, and small children asking for money, candy, and pens. We are hounded by locals for services and goods at every moment.
This woman is demonstrating how most people here do their laundry. In the main bazaar, long canals run alongside both sides of the road, directly below the stone arcade. The stone this woman is working on crosses the canal.
Here we are, then, at a more remote village, Anegundi, that is a bit more calm, and free of commercialism. The villagers here are taking part in a common ritual, where we take photos, they examine the digital replay, get excited, and ask for more pictures. This can go on for 10 minutes, easily, and is quite fun. Initially, I photographed them filling up bags of rice for market.
Some small children in Hampi have learned to ask you to take their picture, and then ask for money, chocolate, or other goods. One must be wary of cute 8 year olds asking you to take their picture. Above, Cynthia of Florida, shows a picture to some village ladies.
Here is a temple of 64 columns. At the center we have a group of men playing with cards and money. I tried to capture the very cool scene for readers of this blog, but was discouraged from doing so. "Illegal activities," someone waved me away. Readers are encouraged to use their imaginations. Pretty neat, how the columns obscure vision into the temple's center, no?
Down in the river, people bathe, and do their laundry. Here, two women dry something colorful.
Above we have a most remarkable phemomena. While my physical form might appear, as some would say, blurry, my spiritual form is in fact crystal clear. My physical form visibly vibrates with the emanations from my inner being. I have just received a blessing, or bracha, as the Israelis behind me said, from Lakshmi, the temple elephant. She is, at 20, very young. She likes to eat bananas. To receive a blessing, one must hand her some money, which she grabs with the tip of her trunk. After giving the money to her handler, she delivers a blessing, in the form of a tap, to your head. Highly recommended to all travellers, aged 9 to 90.
Hampi is well known for its bouldering. Here we are, about to undertake an expedition into the hills of Hampi, a crash pad on our shoulders, and gear in hands. Our team of forensic experts are still hard at work, trying to determine the meaning of this body language. Beggum is a nice lady who has a small house at the end of a lane, and serves some of the most delicious food ever, along with renting out used climbing gear. Some might call the shoes abandoned, as they are in disrepair, and what isn't terribly distressed, certainly won't fit well. Climbers are advised to their own shoes. Duh. I trekked around the hills and met some really sweet climbers, and realized I was seriously out-classed here, in terms of difficulty, shoe quality, and experience climbing outdoors. Luckily, crash pads also make excellent portable couches. Dan, a doctor from England, who also happened to be a sports medicine expert and climber, looked at a climbing injury I sustained in Berkeley, and gave me some exercises to do. Thanks Dan the Doctor!
Readers of this blog find themselves in powerful company. Our readership is rather remarkable, in that great world figures are following our journey, step by step. In Jerusalem, George Bush follows hot on our heels, and in Ahmedabad, the Dali Lama isn't far behind. In Hampi, all the tourists are booted for several days so the Indian President can visit the temples. We are bewildered, and wonder what figure will follow in our footsteps, next. Perhaps we will share a Kerala boat cruise with Putin? That would be interesting, Da?
Stay tuned, as we now make our way back to Goa, in order to meet Alex and Yotam, for what is sure to be a great romp with yet to be announced leaders of world politics, spirituality, and commerce.
Below, we find one of many kiosks in the many bazaar. This one is painted an eye catching blue hue. The daughter of the operator is opening the door to join her mum.
I stay on the other side of the river, which we must reach via motorboat. The older boats, bamboo baskets covered with rice sacks and tar, are no longer in use at this crossing. To cross is 10 Rs each way. At 6pm, the boat magically turns into a pumpkin, leaving princesses and unlucky backpackers both in the lurch. Multiple motorbikes are frequent companions in the smaller, older, boats. Below is our hero, bravely crossing the river by motorized boat.
Hampi is much more quiet and clean than Ahmedadbad. India's formidable population must live primarily in the cities, like people in most contries do. The countryside, then, is quite peaceful.
Here is the initial evidence that we are hot on the trail of the international, but Israeli dominated, backpacker circuit. One can have excellent falafal, schnitzel, Italian, English, and Korean food here. Jachnun, a Yemenite dish, which readers of our blog will remember us eating in Israel, can be found on Shabbat at our guest house restaurant, along with couscous.
Above, the view from my bungalow's porch. Below, the guest house restaurant, which is run by some really sweet Nepalese folks.
At no added cost, we get some lovely sunsets and lazy mornings with all manner of birds playing around. Below, someone returning home from working in the rice fields.
Every evening, we are treated to something like this:
Click through for more pictures. I believe that every evening at least 100 photos are taken of this sunset, meaning about 200mb of sunsets per day, times a 90 day tourist season, is, approximately, 2 gigabytes of photos of these palm trees and sunsets in Hampi every year.
Eager to shower after my long trip, I turn on the hot water and find there is none. I inquire at the front desk, and this steaming bucket shows up. Ok. With the use of a little plastic bucket, whose shape mirrors the large buckets women balance on their heads to transport water home from pumps and wells, I have a hot shower. It isn't as bad as initially expected, and is actually quite nice. One might be cleaner this way, as one focuses first on cleaning, and second on the physical pleasure of hot water. Also, it's nice to be in intimate contact with the physical and material sources and inputs of our lives. Hot water is a luxury for many people on this planet, and it's actual cost and amount consumed is more evident here. The first half of the bucket is for cleaning -- the rest is pure luxury.
One question this man had about Jerusalem is answered, in part, here. Why would people build on top of one another across thousands of years? I mean, really? A look at this piece of documentation, captured on the main drag of the ancient Hampi bazaar, explains a few things. One can see here some contemporary inhabitants of Hampi freely using the architectural remnants of the ancient stone bazaar. This, of course, makes perfect sense. Why build from scratch, when you can just, say, add a roof, and have a home? It's not How Buildings Learn, but How Cities Learn.
On our first outing into the awesome landscape which surrounds Hampi, filled with boulders and 500 year old temples, we encounter this happy family living in a temple. The mom has just returned home with food for her children. Evidence of having read too much Osamu Tezuka manifested, as an entire story instantly sprang to mind. Young puppies, living on the outskirts of town in the shadow of ancient temples, on a mountain top, wait for their mother to return home with milk. Every day they eagerly await her return, and she seeks out the best scraps of foods to convert into healthy milk. Dal for protein, carrots for vision, and milk for strong bones -- she wants her pups to grow up to be strong. Her husband, their dad, died while defending the temple from an aggressive band of exploitive humans and monkeys. She fights criminals in the town, and is, tragically, killed one day. The eldest pup, who witnessed his mom's death, must come to terms with life here, care for his siblings, defend the temples, and continue fighting the evil that invades this holy place.
I like coconuts. So do monkeys. And I love monkeys.
Bikes make me happy. Here is our happy hero, riding a bike, clad in his new shirt. The shirt is a 3 for 1: it protects me from sun, helps the air circulate undernearth my clothing, and adds more color to our modest blog's photographs. Above, I am depicted biking around to various temples in the surrounding rural landscape, which is filled with banana tree & rice plantations, temples, and pilgrims. Lots of Hindus travel to these temples. I visited one mosque, which was beautiful, and found myself totally alone.
This picture illustrates a typical Hindu temple, and gives a sense of what the surrounding landscape looks like. I find the endless hills with boulders on them geologically inexplicable. Well, I have some theories, but they aren't worth sharing.
Many boulders have these markings on them, both on hills, and in structures. Evidence, I think, of how they were cut.
We seek out medical tourism. Here is our protagonist, after having undergone a procedure whereby a large red growth was removed from the facial and cranial parts of his body. The operation, as one can clearly see, was a success. The barber, at right, is 21 or so, and has been working as a barber since the age of 7. The other man let me interrupt his treatment, which can take 30 minutes or more, on account of the meticulous nature of hair removal, massaging, oiling, and so on, so that we could talk. He is a local business man, aged 28, and unmarried -- a bit late for an Indian. But, in a joint Hindu household, the family arranges the marriage, and since it means bringing in a wife and kids, the entire economic circumstances must be considered. Arranged marriages make more sense in this context. A tech worker from Google in Hydrabad informs me, however, that this type of family structure is out of date in most parts of India.
The main Hampi area, and even across the river where I stay, is a bit of a scene. It is filled with backpackers from all over the world, and small children asking for money, candy, and pens. We are hounded by locals for services and goods at every moment.
This woman is demonstrating how most people here do their laundry. In the main bazaar, long canals run alongside both sides of the road, directly below the stone arcade. The stone this woman is working on crosses the canal.
Here we are, then, at a more remote village, Anegundi, that is a bit more calm, and free of commercialism. The villagers here are taking part in a common ritual, where we take photos, they examine the digital replay, get excited, and ask for more pictures. This can go on for 10 minutes, easily, and is quite fun. Initially, I photographed them filling up bags of rice for market.
Some small children in Hampi have learned to ask you to take their picture, and then ask for money, chocolate, or other goods. One must be wary of cute 8 year olds asking you to take their picture. Above, Cynthia of Florida, shows a picture to some village ladies.
Here is a temple of 64 columns. At the center we have a group of men playing with cards and money. I tried to capture the very cool scene for readers of this blog, but was discouraged from doing so. "Illegal activities," someone waved me away. Readers are encouraged to use their imaginations. Pretty neat, how the columns obscure vision into the temple's center, no?
Down in the river, people bathe, and do their laundry. Here, two women dry something colorful.
Above we have a most remarkable phemomena. While my physical form might appear, as some would say, blurry, my spiritual form is in fact crystal clear. My physical form visibly vibrates with the emanations from my inner being. I have just received a blessing, or bracha, as the Israelis behind me said, from Lakshmi, the temple elephant. She is, at 20, very young. She likes to eat bananas. To receive a blessing, one must hand her some money, which she grabs with the tip of her trunk. After giving the money to her handler, she delivers a blessing, in the form of a tap, to your head. Highly recommended to all travellers, aged 9 to 90.
Hampi is well known for its bouldering. Here we are, about to undertake an expedition into the hills of Hampi, a crash pad on our shoulders, and gear in hands. Our team of forensic experts are still hard at work, trying to determine the meaning of this body language. Beggum is a nice lady who has a small house at the end of a lane, and serves some of the most delicious food ever, along with renting out used climbing gear. Some might call the shoes abandoned, as they are in disrepair, and what isn't terribly distressed, certainly won't fit well. Climbers are advised to their own shoes. Duh. I trekked around the hills and met some really sweet climbers, and realized I was seriously out-classed here, in terms of difficulty, shoe quality, and experience climbing outdoors. Luckily, crash pads also make excellent portable couches. Dan, a doctor from England, who also happened to be a sports medicine expert and climber, looked at a climbing injury I sustained in Berkeley, and gave me some exercises to do. Thanks Dan the Doctor!
Readers of this blog find themselves in powerful company. Our readership is rather remarkable, in that great world figures are following our journey, step by step. In Jerusalem, George Bush follows hot on our heels, and in Ahmedabad, the Dali Lama isn't far behind. In Hampi, all the tourists are booted for several days so the Indian President can visit the temples. We are bewildered, and wonder what figure will follow in our footsteps, next. Perhaps we will share a Kerala boat cruise with Putin? That would be interesting, Da?
Stay tuned, as we now make our way back to Goa, in order to meet Alex and Yotam, for what is sure to be a great romp with yet to be announced leaders of world politics, spirituality, and commerce.
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