by
evilhippy
@ 2008-01-14 - 11:43:56
Style over substance, I specialise in this as you'll know if you've read anything here before.
Substance isn't so easy to come by, you see, when your whole environment is geared towards you doing as little as you can: as little as you can allow yourself to get away with before scruples kick in, and you start feeling guilty about doing nothing beyond a twice-daily amble to the hotel restaurant and back.
This is I did yesterday, ambled back and forth twice, I mean. Well it felt like it anyway.
I think I actually walked off out of the little one-street village of Virrupapur Ghaddi in the opposite direction from the river crossing, through the miniature slum adjoining the tail end of the road, and out through a water meadow onto the first tarmaced road since the entrance to Hampi, across the water and a good 3 miles away by conventional non-avionic transport (i.e. not as the crow or any other airborne creature flies).
I only think it because, while I know I have done this, I couldn't reliably state on which day - this tells you all you need to know about a place where I looked at my watch this morning and was genuinely stuned to note that we had entered double figures, the event had completely slipped me by.
I had to check with myself again half an hour later (while ambling towards the restaurant) that the current month was indeed January [it is January isn't it? yes of course it is, any later and my birthday would be the day after tomorrow and I like to think I'd have clocked that on its way in; we are in 2008 now I know that, I'm pretty sure of that anyhow, well, I mean I have a rough sort-of idea that we are..].
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Hampi is a powerfully tranquil place, if I may be allowed to get away with a conflicting phrase like that. It is, as the guidebooks say, a very easy place to stay longer than first intended, the beaches of Goa are just like that too but this place offers a lot more of that elusive substance. Not that I've sampled too much yet.
As predicted, it isn't exactly a dry town and my liver isn't getting the R & R it probably deserves, although there is no booze on any menu at any venue and for extremely good reason; the police come around periodically and check up that no-one in this holy place, former capital of the Vijayangar empire as it is, is boozing it up, and I dread to think what happens if they find anyone doing so. The fact that every restaurant you go into for the first time, or the first time the owner or manager sees you in there, they make quiet mention that beer is very much available, just not on the menu.
The cynic in me supected nothing less than this, naturally.
But hey, there are worse things to do and I'm still getting out there and doing a reasonable bit of walking, hopefully climbing too although I haven't given my cold (physical symptoms persisting, the frogs of India aren't living in the ponds, toilets and showers any more as they apparently all have a timeshare arrangement rotating between them a permanent residence in my throat) time to sort itself out yet.
This is a slightly weak excuse, yes, I know, but when you feel a bit shitty in yourself, and you can't get any painkillers to sort your little ailment out it can be hard to motivate yourself into going rock climbing.
There is no pharmacy here in Hampi, nor across the river here where I actually am in Virrupapur Gaddi, and no shops sell western tablets or pills like paracetamol ibuprofen or aspirin - medicine here is universally ayurvedic, meaning, quite plainly, that it doesn't work. Actually that's shockingly untrue as many things do work, large chunks of synthetic medicine are based on naturally occuring compounds, but pain medication and temperature-lowering westernised synthetics are what I know and there seem to be no equivalent here 
(...although they do provide a natty line in an ayurvedic sort of Deep Heat muscle-rub, it burns the pain right out of you with...more pain!!).
The other point in favour of my continual laziness is that I can often only breath on the third attempt thanks to the amphibians nesting in my oesophagus, so I feel just a touch disinclined to hang off a cliff face engaging in hardcore physical exercise. Reuben the fire spinner chappie didn't make the case for me doing stuff any stronger when he said that the grading system (already a sorce of quiet embarrassment for me when talking climbing) is brutally hard, and Reuben is one of those annoyingly well-built chaps made up entirely of smiles and muscle, and apparently biologically allergic to bodyfat. If he says they're hard then I'm gonna need amphetamines to get anwhere on these rocks!
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However! Still! Yes! I've seen some of the 250+ temples they have in these here parts, and most impressive they are too. Having been here for a bit now, and having seen some baheaviour that can only be described as incredulous - not a morsel of these behaviours was in any way akin to a credule - I also want to prepare a little piece on the multitude of ways in which people expliot the tourist industry - it is amazing what people will ask for, that's all Im saying for now.
Touring some of the temples between the Sacred Centre of Hampi and the Royal Centre slightly South of it, I have seen some awesome architecture, a lot of wonderful and slightly bizarre scenery, and a lot of lizards and, if I didn't know any better, what I would call chipmunks. The temples are swamped with these little critters although not being native to a country which the chipmuk itself is I can't be sure in my identification. They're cute sandy-coloured little squirrels with dark stripes down the body, and that's chipmunkey enough for this naturalist.
Yes, I said naturalist. No, the episode with the Norwegians didn't count.
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Beyond that, seeing as I'm just gently exploring the countyside and templescape at my own pace, and as John seems pretty happy sitting in palolem for the time being seeing as he, on his 2nd or 3rd night in the place shacked himself up with an Indian girl, and more power to him I say. He may be there a while longer.
I can't resist saying at this point either that when Greg and I arrived in Palolem he managed to shack himself up with a nice lass on his first night, too.
And I woke up on Christmas morning to find he had acquired a bedmate then, too.
Just saying, some of us got it and some of us ain't.
Did I mislay that application to the Buddhist monastery? 
And the style/substance thing, finally, I have to say was influenced entirely by a post from Ransfuchs, here - read the comments underneath, not just the short post.
The featured blog thing, seemingly arbitrary beyond all sense or meaning, got me slightly pissed off at the way of the world, although only vaguely; I wasn't going to set any fires this time or anything.
What I get annoyed about in the world of blogs and journals, of which I am myself capitolly guilty, is the mindless reporting of trivial details from lives we don't much care about and lifestyles we may even abhor, let alone might just disagree with or be annoyed by.
I understand the irony completely, thank you for pointing it out.
My point here is that if you haven't got fuck-all worth saying, at least say so in a way that's half interesting, which I try to do.
Style over substance, not altogetehr a bad thing, then. Unless you look at the last labour leadership which was often accused of exactly that - mind you, if I can string things out for a full 12+ years, I'll be pretty happy.
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As an aside, that title there is rather good isn't t? I feel its quite wasted here, but I couldn't think of anything else. I will almost certainly use it again, watch out.
