Hampi and Mantralya

I love a farce, preferably from a comfortable distance. To be a player is far less pleasant.

The Hampi weekend was beautiful and ridiculous. It began with the repercussions of a meal we all ate on Thursday. By repercussions I mean diarrhea, nausea, dehydration and exhaustion. All six of us on the trip had some degree of all of the above. Ugh.

After an all-night bumpfest on the bus, we finally arrived in Hospet at 4am. Our tour guide allowed us four hours sleep in the hotel before we shuffled back to our seats and rode the short distance to Hampi.

When I finally get my pictures posted, I will let them speak for themselves. The ruins were stunning. I was in a bit of a haze thanks to the sickness, which added a surreality to the entire experience. It was a non-stop jaunt around the site -- look at this, stop here, walk here, listen to this description, climb that thing, on the bus, off the bus, no time for dawdling. Our tour guide was relentless. But very knowledgeable.

Eight hours of activity in the sun squeezed the last bit of enthusiasm out of me. When I got back to the hotel, I went to bed and slept for 11 hours.

The next day we headed to Mantralya in the state of Andhra Pradesh, north of Karnataka. In Mantralya the birthday of an important saint was being celebrated. It was another 8 hours on the bus through potholes, backroads and tiny towns where we had to turn around because the driver made a wrong turn somewhere.

When we finally got there a procession was coming down the street. The six of us foreigners were nearly swallowed by the crowd of men whose interest we piqued. Drums were pounding, people were yelling, a huge wooden statue thing was being carried down the street, a random man smeared red dust down my forehead. It was intense.

We had 8 hours to do as we pleased, but when we did anything, people followed us, stared, asked to take our pictures, crowded around and made it impossible to stand still for more than 30 seconds. It was amusing at first, but quickly became downright annoying.

So we hid out at the hotel most of the day, occasionally venturing out to see what was happening in town, but mostly too tired and sickly to care.

At the end of the day, a friendly couple from our bus invited us to walk to the river with them. We gladly accepted and had a lovely talk by the shore watching people do their evening bathing while the sun went down. It was almost jarring how serene the evening was after two days of hectic scrambling.

Despite the intensity of bumping, I was tired enough to sleep on the 9 hour bus ride back to Bangalore. I went straight to bed and didn't wake until 11:30am.

I'm still tired. I want a cheese sandwich. I've run out of toilet paper. These seem like insurmountable problems at the moment.

I know they're not.