Versive

I'll get these photos up to date so I can start doing this like a proper travel writer if it kills me. There a LOT of photos in this one, but first of all in an effort to stay on top of the proper travel writing process; which is where a writer tells you about where he has just been while all the thoughts are fresh, and provides relevant and recent photographic evidence to back it up instead of parceling out the pictures from several months in the past - I'll just tell you quickly where I am right now. It's very nice, so a cup of tea while reading might make a pleasant choice of accompanying refreshment - I'm extremely pleased to say that there are absolutely no decapitations in today's entry

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At the moment I am in the lovely city of Kochi (cochin) in a great value and very nice hotel that thankfully doesn't offer rooms with TVs within my budget. This means I might actually get out there and do something
The hotel - the Sapphire tourist residency - while not selling food of any kind is also willing to serve me tea and coffee in containers so disproportionately massive that a human head could quite feasibly be stored inside of one, without any further reductions.

They also have superb, by Indian standards, internet access right here in the lobby next to the tea and coffee deployment vats and the lobby itself is small, clean and charming, and offers a view of every arriving and departing guest which allows me to spot all the pasty white folk like me, an extremely easy method of surveilling fellow travellers, and even engage them in conversation if I feel like having any friends that day.

Today I do not feel like having friends, nor anyone to have to speak to for more than a single sentence, except maybe the staff of the pizza hut again; after last night I need about 3 weeks in a rejuvenating vat of Aloe Vera and B-vitamins, and another couple of pizzas. They have a genuine American let's-make-yerr-fucking-fat-and-charge-ya-fucking-shitloads-ferr-it Pizza Hut here in Kochi, and after getting just a little crazy eating all the Indian food - which I honestly believe is done far better back in England because over here it almost all tastes of only 3 or for slightly unpleasant things - I went there after rising bright and early only slightly after midday, and ate two whole disks of gloriously Western food that made me happier than I ever thought possible.

The lobby here really is very nice; it also lets me scope out all the attractive Western female travellers, which makes it a lot easier than usual to practice my chat-up tricks and try and bed a few more Scandinavians (I'm only joking honey XX Mostly joking, anyway... )

Unfortunately, the table and chair combination directly supporting this internet access setup is just slightly too achingly small in its size, and is all solid wood construction making adjustments totally impossible.
The only way to make myself properly comfy here, I suppose, would be to slice small portions from the bottom of my feet, a discomfort issue I will avoid and simply put up with the usual `made for Indians`-sized furniture one, and have the soft tissues of my knees slowly pressed into a jelly.

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Photographs:

Right, we're back at Hampi again and, yes, there are still rather a lot of photos of the temples and suchlike ancient scenery. There are also a whole bunch of nice landscape shots buried in with them, and I hope I remembered to take a couple in high resolution because some of the views we had over there were absolutely breathtaking.

Just a couple of carvings here first off - as usual, click the links for the full pictures. If you didn't know it, you can right-click on the links and choose to open them each in a new window, so save this bloody website from constantly taking you off this page!
I mention this just in case, because some fo the links really are worth seeing, a lot of people don't know you can do that, and it is infuriating to say the least when your computer navigates you all over the internet when all you want to do is read one bloody page of it.

Some female god, probably one of the five million or so incarnations of Ramayan or Devi - very good detail though:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture048.jpg

Hanuman, looking all the tough-guy-simian-deity thing as usual:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture029.jpg

Some.....thing, Man or woman, I have no idea:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture030.jpg

Hanuman again:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture031.jpg

And a man or god that is either running reeeeaaallly fast, or just does not know how to dance well at all:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture032.jpg

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Okay, onto the cool stuff; the temple entrance left standing alone at a site near Kings Balance; subsidence and a few earthquakes have cracked the entire structure as you can see, and the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) teams restoring Kings Balance nearby will get to work saving this pretty soon, too:

This is from one of the buildings in the impressive Vittala temple complex - the reason the stonework in this 500-year-old site looks so clean is because it was disassembled and removed for individual restoration, and I took this shot because you can still see the numbering on the stonework that allowed the ASI teams to take away and fully re-erect this massive, hugely important historic site:

Lizard I caught on the temple wall. Reptiles: aren't they just the coolest creatures?:

Another building from the Vittala complex; there are some parts that just can't be restored safely so, just like the Colloseum in Rome, vast concrete slopes exist to keep the structure's integrity intact and keep the whole vast edifice from crashing down. It ain't pretty, but it lets these things survive:

Small temple shrine on the way to Vittala, near the site they call the Kings Balance:

A slightly closer shot of that, if you want it:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture042.jpg

Part of a temple complex I can't even remember:

The front of that solitary temple entrance we saw before - this is the real beauty of the site, as you can see the cracking at the rear has only partly come through to the front of the structure:

And these are a few of the ASI guys putting back together some of the Kings Balance site:

This is the main thing standing at Kings Balance, and seems to be what the King was actually Balancing, which leads me to believe yet further that the Kama Sutra was perhaps popular reading, back in its day :

The majority of the Kings Balance site:

Same site from further up the hill, a pretty typical thing around Hampi; a massive scene of rolling hills and impossible boulders, with lonely temples and ancient Bazaars standing in the middle of the scenery:

The hill with the Hanuman temple at the top - 575 step lead up to it and the builders had never heard of a ruler - every single step seemd to be of a different height or depth, making the walk up it not just energy-sapping but tortuously irritating as your footfalls kept stopping or dropping unexpectedly or you had to spend the whole time staring at where your feet were going. If you did that of course, the monkeys might come and pinch everything on or near you not actually stapled in place, so those ancient builders were receiving some very modern cursing and swearing from me every time I went up or down that path.
I walked 5 kilometres in the baking midday heat to get these photos of the path going up the side of the mountain, then took a rickshaw to a nearby village the next week and saw the whole thing much closer and with far better views of the winding, walled steps. C'est la vie... :

Most boulders around Hampi were playing this sort of game with gravity and the minds of tourists:

A tree dropping aerial roots, and the occasional monsoon landslide, had turned this anciently paved path into an uneven and unusable roadway - now, it is part of a peasant's land and the course of progress alonside the river, to and from the Kings Balance site, has had to be drastically changed. plus, it makes a lovely picture don'tcha think? (you don't need to answer that ):

From the top of the Kings Balance site you can see the post-holes cut into the rock for the future restoration of the ancient monument - and the lake beyond is actually part of the river, so wide and shallow it makes you forget how powerful and fast it is just a little bit downstream. The mountain hosting the Hanuman temple can be seen on the far left, in the distance:

Boulders fucking with gravity again:

This was the view from inside one of the bazaars, the main Hampi bazaar in fact, thankfully this part of it is entirely bereft of tourist traps, beggers, panhandlers and autorickshaw drivers!:

That same deserted end of Hampi bazaar, at a quiet time of day even so and viewed from the edge of the pillared corridor from the last picture:

And this might just be the coolest schoolhouse in the world - only for the infants, and this was a day off or something, but that ancient building is now where Hampi's youngest residents learn their ABCs (and their 3 `R`s: Religion, religion, and religion ) :

I tried to get a good photo that would show you all how the people here live inside the ancient structures around the bazaar - like the school, this pillared building serves as house, home and garden for a small group of families. They even string their washing line from the stonework:

Now this, this could have been a brilliant photo in its own right in so many ways; the angle and colour of that line of water was just begging to be framed up and photographed; but this kid just wouldn't leave it - or me - alone. So I got one that shows up something quite neatly in itself anyway; the kid is playing with one of the spinning top toys that English kids gave up as "just so last year, Gooooohhd Mom" in about the 19th Century - but it's all hundreds of the kids around here need to keep them happy, and more power to them for that. He was an annoying little tyke, wouldn't stop tugging my arm and showing me what he could do with the top thing, but this is where he gets his fun; and this is where he has to - right next to a stream of poisonous, acid-green water running right through the bazaar just outside his home. That's a water standpipe where locals draw drinking water from in the middle of it, by the way:

The smaller Gopuram of the Virupakshur temple complex at the rear of the picture. I never did get inside that one even though I walked past it almost every day; the day I went to look at last I found they wanted 250 Rupees for it (the same as entrance to 3 huge complexes just down the road), and it was tiny and still in use so you couldn't even fart in there without causing some heinous hanging-worthy sacrilege, and they wanted you to leave your shoes outside in a big pile right near loads of panhandlers, and I'd had another pair of mine stolen the day before. So, I thought with a sound mental balancing of the available cultural benefits and vital insights into the workings of a real Hindu temple; Fuck It. Anyway here it is:

The main Virupakshur Gopuram, from the bottom, obviously. It is angled so steeply inwards after a few dozen feet that you can see only the first few layers from here:

Monkey:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture007.jpg

Monkey again:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture008.jpg

A power-sharing exercise between cows and crows; so they are handy for something, then (the crows I mean):

And I thought this was just a neat shot, a crow right between the horns of a cow:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture001.jpg

COOL SCENERY:

Some of the divisions among the paddy fields make for some great lines and angles:

And some of the rocky plateaus offer great vies up above them:

Mount I-ain't-climbing-you,-bitch seen once again from near the ground. You ain't gonna see it from much higher than this :

And proof! Proof yet again that I'm actually in India - yay!!! :

Stupid pose provided free of charge

These are the ghats where early morning washing of clothes takes place by the men and women from the entire town. Still in Hampi, South side of the river in the holy part (where you can't get a beer) the photo taken from me riding on the boat back to the North side (where you can get a beer but it's still illegal, so sometimes you have to get it served in teapots). The word `ghat` means mountains, ceremonial steps, and high altitude paths, depending on context, but you can see the kinda correlation I'm sure:

A view down the river:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture158.jpg

And some more carvings, a whole row of them seried along the stones by the boat docking area:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture157.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture156.jpg

More carvings, from the outside of the Ranazana temple I think....:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture155.jpg

A cool little miniature temple carved in the side of the massiviature (sic) temple of the Ranazana complex:

I found thjis tiny thing out the back of the Elephant Stables, untouched for decades and the ASI boys hadn't got round to working on it yet. It was protected by only a flimsy triple layer of barbed wire and a massive ditch - no match for me, my heavy walking boots and the nice fresh bloody grazes on my back :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture153.jpg

Have a look around this picture and try and find all the tenmples and shrines - there six in all, and this is just one random hillside out the back of the Elephant Stables complex in the middle of nowhere!! This really used to be a major population centre of one of the ancient (Vijayanangar) empires:

The funnelled web of a funnel-web spider; these are, literally, everywhere in India:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture151.jpg

Another part of the templed land I found around the back of the Elephant Stables - thing is, I just wandered down a random path between a banana plantation looking for somewhere to relieve myself of some excess fluids I was needlessly carrying about, and I saw the little ramshackled shrine hidden by the barbed wire and the ditch. I investigated after divesting myself of about half a pint of processed 7-UP and found not just that, but this:

Then I looked over to my side and found THIS:

A whole abandoned fort of some kind, without even a signpost or any kind of road or even pathway access. All there was was an ancient sign from the government; the usual one about ancient protected monuments; but it was rusting and weathered, and I don't think anyone has even thought about this place for the last 30 years. Only in Hampi could you just lose an entire ancient fort.

Let's play the hidden temple game again; there are 6 in this picture:

And another 7 in this one, although one or two of them are the same ones from the last photo:

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These are the cute little chipmunk, squirrel creatures you see all over. They may be pests to some but , gosh darn it, aren't they cute? :

They can climb upside won pretty well too:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture140.jpg

This is the Lotus Mahal, a symetrical shrine of some antiquity in its own private grounds called the Ranazana complex. Yes, that's what that is all about; a great big garden for this:

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I found yet another little museum inside the same complex with another vast collection of carvings of gods and characters from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata; I'm gonna bore you with the pictures because these ones are actually quite good:

Hanuman:

Nagini:

And one of a pair of elephants outside the gates - but Not Ganesh, who sits like a human, has the usual over-adequate supply of Hindu god's arms, and carries stuff in them like sceptres and maces, swords and vases, scrolls, severed heads and bloody sickles. Most Hindu gods have some anger issues, I suspect, but anyway here's that elephant:

Me at the Elephant Stables, again proving that I actually did come to India and am not hiding out at a small internet cafe in Slough I may have had a drastic haircut but I still haven't learned to shave, obviously:

The Elephant Stables, amazing in size and detail, and age - these were each home to a royal elephant, 500 years of monsoons, not-so-civil wars, general neglect and pachyderm shit and still they're standing and looking pretty damn cool. I really, really love elephants, and even being in the place where these creatures were living for hundreds of years under various Maharaja's rule made me all warm and fuzzy inside:

This was that museum in the Ranazana/Lotus Mahal grounds, formerly quarters for staff of the elephant stables and the Maharaja's other personal peons, chefs, flaying victims etc :

The roof of the Stables:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture127.jpg

The side view along the Stable front:

And some more of the domes of the stables themselves:

Each dome is slightly different, all are unique as I imagine were the creatures that once inhabited them.

This was a gate tower in one corner of the Ranazana compound:

And this was one, in another corner:

The Lotus Mahal again from the outside:

There was a vast layered foundation in the middle of this compound, the foundation for the great palace that once stood there for the Queen; because this was her personal enclosure int he days of the Maharajas. The Lotus Mahal was built as a symbol of love for her by one of the rulers, but the palace - her actual living quarters - wasn't left in much more of a state other than its base layers. Excavations nearby showed that foundations for another, smaller building were huge and deep and there is a belief, according to the kindly tour guides that I eavesdropped on (I wasn't gonna pay for it when a bunch of fat Americans already have done) that the Queen's personal palace would probably have been something really quite huge, perhaps a hundred and eighty feet tall which, for a building to actually live in in those days (because of the space needed inside - you couldn't just make it solid stone like the Gopurams at the Virupakshur temple) really was something incredible. These foundations are all we can see of it above ground:

Another corner of the same complex was guarded over by this tower:

Which looked pretty cool from the ground:

I just had to sneak some photos of these ancient weapons artefacts in the museum - this one was less guarded but Indian tourists were everywhere, and I didn't wanna get shouted oput of the compound!:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture110.jpg

Far better quality, this great black marble statue of Ganesh, one of the best I've seen in India:

And another marble, lathe-turned pillar:

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Back in Hampi, on the flimsy little boats that ferried us all across the river twice each day, they carried up to, I counted one particularly full load, up to twentyseven, that's 27 people, and, when needed, a motorbike as well on the front. These boats were only about 12 feet long abd when this full, the waterline was about a half-inch from the sides! Anyway, this is the best shot I could get of it, seeing as I was one of the 27 myself:

Right that's it, too much for today already, going slightly mad. I hope to return with the actual written stuff soon, if I get another few mountainous jugs of coffee, maybe even tonight Toodle-pip!