We shall begin with some humour. Here's a recent photo of me!
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric295.jpg
Ha-freakin'-ha, I'm sure if someone's supposed to be taking the piss then the extractee shouldn't be yourself.. 
Could have got a better pic/had shave/looked happier I must admit.
The picture I had in mind was in fact this, an advertisment where the first thing you notice is the fact the advertisers are dealing you a personal insult - great marketing strategy lads!
Oh what a sundry and splendid thing it is, culture.
Of course something about whatever it is they are selling revolves around there being two of them, or that it only takes 2 minutes, or perhaps Victory in Europe day was unexpectedly popular over here and they'd all like to remind us, but still; "Tark abowt laff! Oi pissed moiself!!"
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+50 points to Gryffindor for getting the reference in this post's title by the way. It's nothing to do with Harry Potter, I just like awarding `points to Gryffindor` to people in conversation. It sometimes contrives to make me seem funny, you see.
All the titles are a bit similar to existing movie series' that's all I can say, and I'm sure Rikmos will get it straight away 
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Now, things get a bit confusing from here on in. Because I went sort-of back in time with lots of the pictures (thanks to uploading only a few at a time over ones stored before in batches all in the worng order anyway) and because I went back in time to re-visit Hampi and took loads more photos, and even because internet here is sometimes just an evil tool for deceiving tourists and I'm also even an idiot sometimes, things might appear out of place and order. Just in case you wondered.
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Okay I found this boulder formation on my first visits around Hampi and, being the clever sod I am, realised it was something of a good picture. I may not have a taken a good picture, mind you, but I knew it was in there. Other's thoght so too, for it appeared on postcards available for mere rupees in the bazaar when one could insanely go to all the effort of stopping between temples and photographing it yourself for free.
I had an argument with someone that the the rocks in the postcards were close by, someone was adamnat they just weren't, so whoever they were: nyer nyer nyer 
Also, down there in the corner, that's Maria, that is. When she turns around she's got a real proper face and everything, too:
Okay links to save your sanity - I worked something out by the way folks: you should probabkly right-clisk and choose `open in new window/tab` all the links 'coz if you click 'em they navigate you around in this same window.
If you click the images that are posted in full in order to see the other half then it takes you away automatically, but you gotta right-click the links, althoguh most of you probably worked that out a lot sooner than I did
Another shot of the Lotus Mahal, a small but perfectly formed temple:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric291.jpg
A watchtower in the corner of an old Muslim compound, needs rotating, and it's something a bit different:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric292.jpg
Goddamned rotation tool - this one is pretty cool, taken from inside one of the Elephant Stables near the Ranazana temple, you can see a cool view through the little human-sized doorways that connect each stable, reflecting the same arched patterns:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric290.jpg
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Artefacts fomt he museum, photography strictly prohibited these are just various knick-knacks of bronze/copper/porcelain:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric289.jpg
And assorted ivory relics:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric288.jpg
And the best stuff, naturally, the admittedly paltry but still cool weaponry artefacts; Caltrops, arrowheads and a length of ancient sword-blade(or a somewhat serious arrowhead!):
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric287.jpg
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A length of salvaged carving from one of the numerous ancient empires around there (quite nice):
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric286.jpg
A miniature temple carving from the facade of a full-scale temple, and great photos of the Lotus Mahal when it was first decided to restore it int he 1940s, and the present-dy result (rather nice):
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric285.jpg
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Ah yes, the demented children: on my second visit to the Vittala temple with Maria in tow, as we were eaither leaving or arriving I, note that I, not we, got totally swarmed by a ferocious crowd of completely mad children - a school trip I have to suppose.
They were fascinated by me, in a way I can't begin to describe; they swarmed up to me like a body of water and I had immediately 2 dozen or more small hands to shake and `hello!!`s to answer from every direction.
I had to give my name at least twenty or so times and ask theirs in turn and dish out a `Nice to meet you` or a `Pleased to meet you` each time in that way I have of not being able to really deal with kids, but amazingly they knew the English civilities amazingly well, and actually sort-of blushed away at being treated so politely.
It was in this way only I managed to disperse the menagerie, and return them to the care of their keeper, or `teacher` as I believe they are sometimes known.
It's hard to get acropss quite how voracious they were in their desire to devour all knowledge of this pasty foreigner, and I had to proclaim my nationality, `country`, loudly and frequently and, this was what they really loved, I was wearing a T-shirt and they saw the edges of various tattoos and before I knew it my shirtsleeves were up, pretty much terminally had they not been kept supervised as I understand you can have vital arteries and nerves cut off via the armpit
In any case, they would not let me go without me having a picture of them - four pictures in fact - and were delighted beyond measure when I showed them the display on the camera, and it was much yanked about by tiny hands as each of them sought to see themselves immortalised in my photobucket account.
It was, by a large margin, the most enjoyable, least embarrassing (for me), and you could even say the most successful encounter with children of my adult life.
Here they are:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric284.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric281.jpg
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Back on the temple trail - somewhere inside, I think, the Achyturaya temple, although I've forgotten how to spell that properly by now - there was a doorway just begging to be photographed. So I did. I'm not one to deny a building when it actually speaks to me and begs, for Christ's sake:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric280.jpg
One of those examples of carving from around the same area that I got strangely hooked on; I have never much seen the attraction in carvings, art galleries, the insides of holy buildings or many other culturally rich things since coming to India (although about 25% of Rome deserves an honourable exemption from this statement) but bizarrely here I was, expending time, thought and camera batteries taking pictures of chiselled hunks of rock. Many are great, some like this are just mediocre but still, I found myself getting oddly fond of seeking out all the different ones I could find:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric276.jpg
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This is cool so it's going up in big format - the view all the way down Hampi bazaar from some huge steps at the far end - remember how big that Virupakshur temple is? Well, you can see it down the end in the middle. That's how long Hampi Bazaar is:
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There is a picture of Maria and I together just here in the collection, but we both look frighteningly constipated so it's going well out of the way, thank you so very much 
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I managed to get a shot of that amazingly tiny and ancient school in the Bazaar again whent he kids were in session, as it were:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric274.jpg
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With a lot of editing, this could make a very cool picture, but it needs the work
The following few shots I took while on an acid trip, so the quality, blurring, sense, reason and meaning of all are open to questioning
Nonetheless, for the fact it was a stupid picture to take (see above) the motto on the sticker is indisputably worthy, and undeniably true:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric273.jpg
I thought this would seem like a path to nowhere, or something equally profound at the time. Tripping. Sensibility. Right out the window.
Better light would have been nice too... :
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric272.jpg
Rocks are cool: this is official, and also beyond question 'coz I wouldn't answer any, so there
Therefore these rocks, although like a great many other rocks, were valid subject matter for me even though the top of my head had begun to open up by this point and good-sized bucketfuls of Serotonin were sloshing into and out of the various canals inside my central nervous system.
I actually managed to get it quite nicely in frame, looking at it now. Amazing:
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Right, I don't care that I was a drug-addled fool at the time, or that you have to rotate the picture and not even the fact it's a little bit blurred - this, I think, is cool.
There was a restaurant and guesthouse called the Tipi, or Teepee (the former spelling is actually correct, at least in this part of the world) owned and loosely run by Rishi, when he wasn't getting smasheroonied.
This was one of the nights his staff did all the work - Rishi dropped the acid with us, or drank it, rather, as we did, and you see him here atop the massive boulder that flanks his restaurant and premises on one whole side - we travelled about the scenery a bit around this time to various mountains in the same valley and always tried to pick out `Rishis's boulder`.
He had climbed up it while tripping his face off on acid, though he probably wasn't all that hammered I suppose because he often did this sort of thing (I am seriously out of practice myself ) and he often climbed the boulder, too.
Rishi is the dark figure standing still and I have no idea who the person dancing on top of such a precipitous rock is, only that I remember Prague, and did much the same thing at a simlar height on some huge rocks in some steepl-slpoed forest, and it is cool, is dancing on big rocks.
Anyway here's the first one:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric270.jpg
And the second one is actually a good picture, although zoomed out and features no dancing hedonists, so it goes up in full:
This also, I believe, is a fairly good picture but you gotta rotate/squint at it as necessary. Featuring once again the JonAlia beast, turn it round - seriously actually do it to this one (Windows XP/Vista only: right-click, edit option, go from there) - and see how one man with a brain full of LSD can actually take rather good photos:
That Tipi on its own (rotate if bothered):
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric267.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric265.jpg
And another cool thing from the world of undisciplined geology; one of the many semi-symbiotic tree/rock occurences caught mid-flirtation. If we'd missed it by just 50 years either side we'd have missed the tree completely :
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric266.jpg
Oh yes, our friend. You're arachnophobic. You will drop LSD within the hour and you KNOW you're about to go do some acid, and you KNOW how things stick in your mind and repeat and undo and reanalyse themselves in that state, so what could you hope to find within 12" of your doorway? This fellow, not the largest, but certainly the most unwelcome spider I have seen in India.
Mind you, you could cure yourself of arachnophobia within the space of one 12-hour trip if you got your head right about it; still, I'd ratehr this guy hadn't chosen this moment to start living in our bin (a large cardboard box) right by the front door of our hut:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric264.jpg
See, I could have put the whole picture in there, but quite frankly after that trip with all the siggestions of octo-leggery at the edges of my vision and my mind the whole time, I don't think I ever want to see him full-size ever again!
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More small creatures - and this isn't anything to do with spiders although you'd have a hard time believing it at first. It is an ant's nest, an entire colony, seemingly living among and along the branches of a tree. I have to admit that I abused these ants, in one sense of the word: I found them in good numbers traversing a washing line hung between two huts carrying a constant chain of food; scraps of stuff, other dead ants of their species and many others, live wriggling larvae of some other insect, bits of leaf, bits of other insects; and they did this on their washing line highway at a place right on a convenient route from our hut to the restaurant, so to be strictly accurate the first few times I abused them quite physically and horribly by headbutting the wire, possibly slaying hundreds. Such is life
The rest of the time, after I had noticed the little guys and almost every time I passed, I liked to fuck with them a bit to see what they would do so I would block the washing line on the top, bottom, or all around; cut bits of leaf off that formed part of their route to the tree, seeing how long they took to make a workaround; removed ants in vital positions in the chain (Carefully, mind, I just put them on the floor or wall near some other part of their operations) that seemed to be occupied not with carrying food, but with giving physical body-language signals; shook the wire mercilessly a couple of times when in a bad mood, I admit - my, but can these buggers stick to something though, they never budged; blew on the chain of progress for 5 minutes straight in order to interrupt them and so to see what orders might come through from Ant High Command; and generally made the prsence of some obstruction or other being known to them to see how they might deal with such a thing.
The nerve centre of the place semed to be this structure made of fibres looking a lot like spider's silk. How the hell exactly they managed this, I would love to know:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric262.jpg
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Okay, this is about the least picturesque arty shot you might ever see, it is a dead dog. Framed nice against the sky, like, but undeniably a canine who has breathed his last. I was stumbling near Goan Corner one day in a bad, unfriendly-drunk sort of mood, and happened across this poor departed doggy, and that just put me in a great mood, I can tell you 
I'd only recently learned that all the restaurant owners habitually beat the stray dogs, sometimes to death (if you had a restaurant out in a semi-rural area with literally hundreds of dogs in town, often 5 or 10 or more in your restaurant amongst your customers, you might look upon it quite differently to the way we probably all do, I can understand that much of it, especially if that's what your parents did and their parents and theirs etc. etc. but still - beating a fucking animal to death is Not On in any circumstances other than those in which to save your own life) so, feeling a little bit drunk and a bit, I admit it, weepy, I recorded this RinTinTin's last resting place, until some other creature came and recycled him, at least:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric261.jpg
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Okay! We all sunshine and smiles after the dead dog yeah? Great! Let's see what else we haad that didn't involve any kind of trauma...oh yes, a sign like those at every entrance to the rocky plateaus and hills near Hampi where climbers climbed, tourists wandered, and lusty couples occasionally snuck off for a shag amongst the rocks, or so some of them told me. Well one half of one of them, anyway. Good enough a place as any, I suppose (wouldn't mind bringing a bit of bedding or something soft, personally).
This sign was a little shorter and far more legible than most others, which were odten cut into or painted onto a handy large rock. Each listed a set of woes ready to befall a tourist, many of them specific to women which really hinted at a happy and untroublesome past eh? Now it is so full of wiry climbers, who are made of little more than bone and muscle, that I would think everyone is safe such is the impressive physique and numerous deployment of these adventurous clamberers (I'll be one myself again one day, you'll see). My answer to the few point on this one would, I suppose if asked my advice by the authorities, be;
1) Darwinian theory, natural selection, ever heard of it? Leave this sort of person to the probabilitiy ratios, I would.
2) Good point. Goooood point. Many cops around here to catch these robbers; what, none on this side of the river? Oh well done. Well done indeed, I can see you are obviously able to travel the two miles needed by some religious teleportation ritual, in lightning speed enough to stand a chance of ever catching anyone, ever. Yeah. Great effort guys.
3) Where were the nearest cops again? Yeah good luck with this one....
4) Thank you, the acual useful bit. I suppose advance notice of about an hour from any criminals is necessary for this to be much practical use, but I can see you are at least happy to come and clean up the body parts after the fact if necessary, which is something.
CYNICISM
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric258.jpg
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Now this, this, folks, is the sign (literally) of someone who really wants some fair play in the marketplace but just has to be realistic at the end of the day and play the same tactics as his would-be detractors.
This belongs to the German Bakery in the village North of the river (beer side) in Hampi, the village actually being seperately called Virrupapur Gaddi but only people like me ever seem to note that down, and the owner; a nice chap who actually looked Vietnamese or Cambodian or Thai, always smiling and friendly; is obviously still a leeeetle bit pissed off about things.
Not only does he serve the best breads and baked cakes and stuff in town, and gets less for it than anyone because he was the cheapest place, but also his is the German Bakery actually listed in the Lonely Planet, and rightly so, whereas no less than three other `German Bakery`s sit on the same side of the river on the same sodding road.
At least he treats it pretty light-heartedly, for all the business he clearly must have to relinquish:
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Crap photo, good point illustrated; I was on the back of a bike or in a rickshaw or something coming back from the lake one time, while I took this and was trying to get a shot of just how some people managed to live with almost nothing - this is someone's house:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/cric254.jpg
Who would have thought a bit of trellis would somewhere have to serve someone as a building wall? And they only had enough for half that side of the hut. Incredible.
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Righty ho, I've reached T-minus 12 pages (that's just 240 photos, folks) in this album whic means only a few more photo posts and we're up to speed. The of course there's the next album, 984 pictures, then Dtefan's collection of super-high-resolution photos from the trek which he burned to CDs for me before we parted, oh and of course there are videos as well. From November 5th onwards - only about 40 vids overall though and I don't know if they'll even play or embed in this properly - we can all have fun finding out together, yay!
Oh yes, I left the hotel and did some stuff today, and have a thought or two which I will share with you becasue of this, going up just after this post, which has been previously prepared. It's a bit self-absorbed so you can skip it if you like.
Ta-ta folks 
