PhotoOnslaught VIII: Timdiana James and the Raiders of the Lost Past

The titles wont be getting better any time soon by the way. Sorry
I'm being a little kinder on your bandwidth today and providing clickable links to many of the photos, and not posting up so many that it takes a week to load each page

Straight into it - have a look, if you have not yet seen, the stunning scenery around Hampi. I particularly liked the boulder in the lower centre with the unaccountable divot in it. God knows what did that - same thing probably that left millions of rounded boulders in gravity-defying positions in the middle of Karnataka, I suppose.
Also, check out the tiny temple on top of the hill near the top right. Apparently it's quite popular - but what do these Gurus expect of their disciples: crampons and a handy knowledge of belay-climbing?:

Three weeks before this shot was taken that mud flat in the middle was a river - this time of year, halfway through the dry season and three months since monsoon - water levels drop rapidly - and dangerously - in many parts of the subcontinent:

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I invite you once more to look at the sheer magnificence of the terrain and scenery in this place; just a little way down from the ghats (steps) and the river crossing is this giant snake of boulders rising from the river and swarming the far bank, the fringes of said bank are lined with luxuriant palms and banana trees, and behind is (yet again) the Virupakshur temple which, despite its millions of appearances in photos of Hampi, still is something rather special to look at.
Beyond that even are the bouldered hills and ancient, tiny temples - what a place to stay, huh? I took this about 50 yards away fom my hut:

One of those roof places I mentioned in the last post about cheap travel here - one place even provided the mosquito nets themselves, and on the roof of the house of the owner was this setup so that she could accomodate even more travellers; 50 rupees a night, one sixth of the cost of a hut, and as long as you don't mind waking up with each sunrise (as you had any kind of choice ) then you're just fine:

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A couple more shots from the same roof, showing the extent of the place where we mostly stayed in Hampi; Goan Corner; which was, quite frankly, rather impressive considering it was all bamboo-thatched rooves but with solid walls. Every hut had woodworm that could probably have dug the channel tunnel a good deal faster than we did - the munching, crunching noise was amazingly loud, but you did get used to it.
Getting used to finding all the fresh sawdust on top of your mozzie net eaxch morning was a bit weird though.
Anyway, this is what some of the place looked like from the roof of the owner's house:

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And this was the actual view from my doorway every morning for a week - it ain't the beach, but it ain't half bad:

This is what these actual huts look like at Goan corner, basic, but neat, and with real actual genuine proper solid walls and everything:

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I found this guy in my room first time I went in there - there is a video of him in her too - he was massive by lizard standards over here, around 10", or 250mm, in length I would guess, most of them are half that so, you can imagine how excited I was to see him on the wall as soon as I moved into my new place! Unfortunately I couldn't resist, as always, trying to have a good look and he scuttled off, dragging his monstrous form over the edge of the wall in seconds - which led me to notice one important thing: these huts, although they have solid brick walls, have no actual filling between walls and roof so mosquitos, beetles, scorpions, lizards and crickets have freer access to your room than you do - you have to undo the padlock to get in, they just climb the wall:

Still, when you get room guests as cool as this guy, I couldn't mind in the slightest

Right, I have a bit of history with this guy: a swallowtail butterfly. Since arriving in Goa in November I have seen hundreds of these buggers and wanted to see what they actually looked like but, unique among the insect world, apparently, these little sods never actually need to land on anything, ever, for the entire course of their lives.
I chased them around - more literally, stood patiently whenever one flew within 50 yards of me - waiting for one to stop for a second for me to admire its glory but no, no, these little shits have a conspiracy against me, and only by waiting with a poised camera by their favourite food bush for lengthy periods of time, plus accidentally walking almost past this one quietly chilling out there, did I finally, finally manage to see one, and get this picture:

Okay, you gotta flip this one around 90 degrees yourself, and it's pretty low-light, and out of focus, but this was the ebst I could do while slightly drunk and swaying in the late evening light, trying to catch the reflection of the mountai in the water of the paddy fields:

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Sunsets. Aren't they nice:

Gotta flip these two, sorry:

And this one too - but isn't that just an amazing picture? It's easy to take good photos with this kind of scenery :

Oh, and the finest temple in Hampi next to, ahem, the finest poo silo in Hampi: in the middle of the main bazaar is this bizarre miniature version of the virupakshur temple in corrugated iron.
It's a giant shit silo for all the cow `leavings` that these sacred creatures bless the town with; quite why they put it in the middle of the main shopping and living area in the whole town is, frankly, the strangest thing in the whole place (and I met some AMERICANS here!! )
Again, you gotta turn this one around yourself with a deft bit of `right-clicking`, but hionestly, it may not be worth the effort:

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With all the crap I've espoused about the mistreatment of women, it is a strange thing to see that one of the billions of bumber stickers ont he back of a leading rickshaw, was this:

This culture I will never quite understand, I'm sure.

Okay, this is just cool: I took a rickshaw ride from Hampi into the nearest city, Hospet, because as usual the one and only ATM Cash Machine in Hampi had run out of money. This happened every single week, and was out of available funds almost half the time.
Why a banking organisation cannot have the foresight to stock up such an important and oft-used cash machine is beyond me; my only conclusion is that there is some backhander deal negotiated with the autorickshaw drivers, who's main hang out of some some 40 or so vehicles is directly opposite the ATM, and who always know exactly when it is out of money (and sometimes they even lie to you saying it's empty when it's not, trying to sway you into a 200 rupee round-trip to Hospet city to get some money out.) I was approached by one driver and told this once, but checked anyway and was able to take out enough cash to keep me going for two weeks, and on emerging was treated to a cheeky grin by the rickshaw driver who had approached me!

Seriously - this is the kind of corruption you'll see if you come here, it's all mild-mannered and in a a way a bit of fun, but all designed to tease just that little bit mmore money from the tourist's wallet.
Anyway I checked and it this time and it actually was out of money, so I went to Hospet in a bone-shaking relic of a rickshaw that actually lost pieces along the way, such was its state of dereliction.
Then again the road was kinda bumpy; we passed an arch each time we went to and from Hospet, and I always missed the chance to get a photo except this time - as we turned the corner at near-lethal speed I leaned out and got this photo, the rickshaw was at such an angle turning the corner, and catching the mirror place perfectly in the bottom corner, made this one of my favourite photos of the trip:

Some nicely-frame rocks and a little shrine-stone, up on the plateau above Goan Corner where all the thin and healthy peiople went climbing

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And I'm not sure if they'll thank me for this, but this in turn is Luisa, and Jon, showing a very difficult balance posture up on the rocks.
Anyway, I look silly 'cause I'm overweight, so they may as well look silly being fit and healthy, so here they are:

And this guy was just an amazing climber:

Okay, as you can tell by the background you have to flip this shot 90-degrees clockwise too, but I had you fooled there for a second didn't I?

Another one to flip around - do it, this is one superb photograph although the scenery, rather than the skill of the photographer is the root cause of this fact:

The shot along the ridge where all the climbers were donig their thing:

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And a few of them doing their thing:

Another great shot from up on the plateau; the fields and the Goan Corner complex which is what you see in the middle did a nice little geometric thing for me, so I took it like this:

Another flipper, these were some rocks right up near the boulders where those other healthy types were throwing themselves about; kinda looked like lions to me, somehow, or at least it reminded me of the Lion King.
A pleasurable absence of Elton John also made the scene even better :

Temple hill again - the one with the rock-climbing disciples struggle mightily to get to see their sacred guru (I suspect that there's actually a road or something going up the back):

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This is a small part of the plateau where most of the boulder climbing took place, viewed from the only rock I was able to climb myself - it practically had a ladder up against it
You can see my very good friend Jon in the corner, giving a sense of scale to this bizarrely patterned rocky expanse:

Jon again, perched on a big-ass rock and with me trying desperately to make it look like he was on the edge of some vast mountain - he was on top of a pretty big boulder, but the effect I wanted to acheive was something akin to a likeness of Edmund Hilary surveying his latest conquered cordillera:

Dunno if it quite worked out...

The plateau in other places (the entrance to it, for example, places that I could get to myself ) was home to these irrational boulders, or, as I believe they are better known `erratic` boulders

That was a poor and rather esoteric attempt at a joke, and seeing as not even dictionary.com or wikipedia.com has a page where I can link in to show you that the term `erratic boulder` is actually a valid phrase, it might not even qualify as a pun, let alone a joke.
That'll teach me to try and be clever, eh? The best wikipedia can do is this by the way - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_erratic
It was probably actually a badly inferred reference from the Discworld book Interesting Times, where the character known as `Teach` (itself, I think, one of Terry Pratchett's myriad brilliances of parody relating to the pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard who gave up an honest life to become the epitome or piracy), who used to be a geography teacher but has turned to the life of a mild-mannered barbarian, analyses a landscape to the mystification of the even more superb character, and far more superb barbarian, Cohen. He mentions that the landscape is not suitable for erratic boulders or artesian wells, an observation on his part essential to the plot of the book, but the terms `erratic boulder` and `artesian wells` just confuse poor old Cohen, who simply likes to chop bits off monsters or evil priests, nick the treasure and the slave girls or the magic sword, and bugger off for a bit to enjoy the proceeds.

Seeing as we are in the middle of a diversion based on my fond memories of this truly excellent book, I'm gonna mention as well that, although Pratchett introduced the character of Cohen in only the second discworld book The Light Fantastic as simply Cohen the Barbarian as a parody of the comic and film character Conan the barbarian, he later manages to extract further brilliance from the same enigmatic character 15 books and 8 years later in Interesting Times, by revealing that he has a first name, Ghengiz, making his parodical exploits of Ghengis Khan in the later story blend seemlessly once more into the finest fictional world ever dreamed up (in this guy's opinion).
If I ever achieve one tenth of the brilliance of Mr. Pratchett I will be a rich, happy, successful and almightily smug bastard until the day I die

Anyway, digressions aside here's them boulders I were tellin' you about:

These larger and less erratic-looking chunks of expatriate magma simply looked nice, and I can't think of any literary diversions so you can just have a look at the pretty pictures instead:

This also looked nice; actually it looked so amazingly green that I was wondering if someone had laced my plain sodas with something a little more exciting, but actually I had to wait a bit for all that

Anyway before there's a world shortage of smilies, here's the picture:

And this is Jon in full-on posing mode - the jammy bastard does actually look a bit like Mick Jagger (in certain lights) and also even the lead singer of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (Anthony Kiedis), at least not when he's taking the piss a bit like he is here, and to cap it all off he actually is the lead singer of a rather good rock/metal band, although I'll leave it up to him to define the actual styles because, quite frankly, I just can't keep up with all the definitions in modern music.
Anyway this is him, looking thinner than I'll ever be, standing on a big-ass rock he had just climbed:

Git

Anyway I clambered about over the ridges and hills in a different direction a day or so later, and found a whole load of great photos to take, which I did, and they're here. Amazing thing this `internet`, isn't it?

And I don't know if I've already gone over a couple of these but these are among the last ones for today, I promise - Lakshmi the tmple elephant having a morning wash down at the bottom of the Ghats in Hampi (on the non-beer side) about 8 in the morning.
Me scraping my arse out of bed, across the river, and getting set up in time to catch the old girl at this sort of time in the morning is something of a miracle in itself, but here she is:

You might remember what I said about the about boats that crossed the river in Hampi, and this one was frankly underloaded and practically deserted; I only count about 14 people and a bicycle on board; but these same craft were the ones taking up to 27 people and a motorbike across the river, so I hope this gives you a sense of the scale of matters:

And a moody and dramatic (I hope) shot of an ancient inscribed tablet in the Virupakshur temple in Hampi central (the one I was too cheap to go into, remember? ) with a lovely exanmple of some ancient Hindi script and a dramatic looking tree bringing up the rear:

And one of the Vittala temple again, with the musical pillars, and a group of Indian women there give you a sense of the vibrancy of the colours that people wear here as a matter of habit, I find both the temple, and the glorious love of colour just about equally pleasing:

Right that's about as much as I can manage, for now.
Tomorrow I'm gonna try and actually leave the hotel and see some sights - I have felt compelled for the past 3 days through a mixture of low-level illness, shame in my actions on the first night I got here (I'll explain, I'll explain..) and a desperate need to catch up on the pictures and sort through the possibly several thousand photographs that I need to get online, and out to you good people, to stay almost totally inside the building, I only went out half a day yesterday, and frankly it's now getting a little bit silly.