Happy Hampi

I was standing in a 3000 year old temple, completely naked and still dripping from the river water. It was at this moment, as I looked out over the boulders and destroyed columns, that I realized Hampi had been calling me all along. A true adventure that began with a bus ticket, a backpack, and a couple bottles of rum.

Friday marked the end of our first official week in India. It was a week packed with new information, new people, new food, and really what amounts to a new way of life in a country that, on the surface, is strikingly different from my own, but, with greater and greater frequency, gives me glimpses of a life full of the same passions, fears, desires and joys as my own. Hampi. We decided to go to Hampi about a week ago. It was easy. At the time, there was no need to book anything, and we figured we'd just take a bus up, see some ruins and head back. Basically a short overnight trip just to say we did it. Two overnight buses in a row seemed like it might be tiring, but whatever. I promised myself I wouldn't waste any time. Friday was a long day. I didn't leave the office until 7:30 because I was waiting for our bus tickets to arrive. They finally did, so I ran home, packed, and then headed over to a party my colleagues were having. There were only three of us going to Hampi that night, but we made an appearance at the party nonetheless. It was a good time. I drank. Took some sweet videos. And acted like an idiot. Typical party Sam. Around 9:30, we packed up the remaining rum we had at the party and headed to the office to catch a cab for the bus station. At the bus station is where the crazy-meter began to make its gradual shift upwards. Little did we know that the crazy-meter would continue to inch upwards over the course of the next 48 hours.

The bus station was totally packed with people. I mean, there are just millions of people everywhere all the time anyway, but man, everybody and their brother was heading out to take a bus Friday night. Turns out, this weekend was a festival weekend and so many folks were heading out of town. This, of course, meant that every single bus would be packed. Needless to say, the three of us ended up in the last three seats, in the last row of a "semi-sleeper". Admittedly, I found this naming convention a little suspicious. Couldn't I just normal sleep? How exactly does one semi-sleep? Suspicious indeed. Our saving grace, alcohol. We knew that no matter how bad this 8-hour bus ride turned out to be, we had booze. And if we drank enough of it, we knew we'd eventually make it to drunk-sleep. And we were fine with that. I think the three of us took some classes in drunk sleep in college, so this would be a piece of cake.

No.

It was not a piece of cake.

It was a piece of whatever is the opposite of cake.

The trip started out great. We went through the Hi. How are ya's? with the other poor souls next to us, set off cruisin down the main drag in Bangalore (and by that I mean immediately into insane traffic) and started mixin some drinks. Yeah! Party! Frat! Sweet! The plan was working. For a while. Problem one. Urine. There was no bathroom on the bus and we were about 2 hours in. As I sit there in a hazy rum fog, Nolan pissed in an empty bottle. Oh and I forgot to mention what they meant by semi-sleeper. See, semi-sleeper means regular bus with no air conditioning and a back window that doesn't work. Problem two. Tom. Tom's a really nice dude from the UK. Drunk Tom is a whacked out lunatic that may get you killed. Now, Tom may be reading this, so I'll try to be as descriptive as possible. At some point, drunk Tom's personal crazy meter started to crescendo and as the normal human beings on the bus lie in slumber, Tom turned his headphones all the way up. Then he started to play the drums on his legs. Then he asked me about 50 times, in pristine British fashion, "Have you ever heard of Oasis?!" I mean, this was already hilarious and out of control on so many levels, but the kicker was that Tom's voice was louder than the really loud bus engine. I totally understood. The bus engine was loud and the music in those head phones at 3am was just blaring. How else were we supposed to have a discussion about the best thing to come out of the UK since the Beatles? We tried to politely ask Tom to keep it down a bit, but that seemed to make him rage a little, and some raging white dude in a bus full of Indians at 3am in the absolute middle of "tigers eat people here" nowhere was definitely not a path I was about to head down. Problem three. The road. About 6 hours in (I still hadn't really slept), the road went from decent to totally ridiculously horrible. Now I'm not some pompous westerner who's too good for other countries roads. These roads were insane. Imagine driving over speed bumps and into potholes, constantly, for 4.5 hours, at 40 mph. Every single second there was another brain-rattling crash that I swear just destroyed the vertebrae in my back. Even better was when there was a really bad one, which was every other one, Tom would yell in the most cliche'd British accent you can muster, "Ahhh for fuck's sake!". This old lady was totally giving him the death eye and he had no idea. I started looking through my dictionary for ways to say "Take him. He's not with me" in Hindi. Luckily, there was no mutiny. Hi Tom.

We eventually did bounce, rock and roll into Hampi. Only, however, after we missed our stop and literally had to call the guide, try to explain what happened, and then finally just really freak out the bus driver by asking him to talk to someone he never met. "Hi, I'm a 6'5" white dude and I'm lost in India. I know you can't understand anything I'm saying, but would you mind talking to this guy?" Extends hand holding cellphone. It worked though. Basawa, our guide, was awesome. He pretty much saved us on a regular basis over the course of the trip. If you ever go to Hampi, which you should, just ask for him by name. He knows everyone. The bus parked and we got out. Then, we wanted to get back in because immediately there were eleventy billion people shouting at us. You want post cards? You need guide? You want a taxi? You want a rick? You want a room? I kind of just said uhhhh alot. I did buy some nice post cards though. You know how we got the commotion to stop? I said, "Uhhh....uhhhh...uhhh." And then I said, "We're looking for Basawa." Silence. Basawa's a man with a plan. People don't screw with his tourists. And like a shining knight on a white mare, there he was. He got out of the air conditioned Nissan Ultima, shook our hands, and we'd never be the same.

After a little rest in a room that Basawa booked for us, we headed out. Tom was still drunk and looked like death. I just smiled a lot. That's my thing. We went to some ruins and got some really good panoramic photos of one of the sites from pretty high up. Oh by the way, I'm done posting photos inside my blog. I think it looks tacky and editing the HTML so that every one shows up right is a total pain in the ass. If you want photos and videos, click on the slide show photos and you'll be taken to a web app where I've been posting all of them. Anyway, we descended down the back side of this slope toward a market and the main temple for that area. The market was bustling and we got to see some really cool stuff. Animals. I really like animals. This place had awesome animals. The first one we saw was a cobra. It was just like the movies. There was some old guy playing one of those recorder things and the cobra popped its head out of a basket and started dancing around. It was crazy. We were walking along the street and everyone kept trying to sell us bananas. I wasn't really sure why, but we bought some. Everyone seriously insisted that we buy their bananas. So here we are walking down the street with these bananas. I happened to glance back and in the distance I saw this cow walking through all the people. Funny. Cows just walk around here. LIttle did I know that this cow had a plan. I glanced back again and noticed that the cow was picking up speed, knocking over little children, and heading towards, well, us. I didn't think too much of it until I turned around a third time and saw thing full trot right towards Nolan. It Wanted the Bananas! Give 'em your bananas Nolan! Run! Oh my god!! We're all gonna die! It was so funny. The cow chased Nolan right into the temple. At the entrance to the temple there were more aggressive animals. Monkeys. These things weren't screwing around either. They'd jump down, smack their palms together as if to say, "Bananas. Now.", and then do their little monkey chirp thing. We handed the monkeys some bananas. Oh but that wasn't all. The cows had our bananas, the monkeys had our bananas, and as we walked through the gate, on the right, a giant elephant was asking for bananas. And not only that, it wanted money too! You walk up, hold out the banana and if it wants to eat it, it does. If not, it puts it down in a pile at its feet for later. Apparently the elephant does blessings as well, but only for cash. And the more cash you give, the longer it blesses you. I gotta try this. I handed its trunk 10 rupies, not really knowing what to expect. It took the cash, put it in a bucket, and then plopped its trunk on my head. It just kept it there for about 8 seconds. I was hooked. I think I gave that elephant a hundred rupies. At one point, after I jumped down from taking pictures with my new fuzzy-trunked friend, Nolan told all the children that I was a giant and that I could bless them too. I was bent over putting my shoes on and when I looked up, there were about 15 pairs of eyes starring at me. I started laughing and they all thought I was hilarious. Then they started touching me. Which was awkward. But still cool.

Basava continued to bring us around to all these wonderful places. He was so knowledgable. He studied archeology and ethnography in college and made his living taking people like us on these adventures. He was good too. He knew exactly what we were looking for and it wasn't the typical tourist traps. Before we knew it, we were straight up Indiana Jonesing it down this river in a buffalo skin boat called a coracle. We paddled down the river and listened to Basawa tell us about Hindu gods and the temples that had been carved into the cliffs. Feeling adventurous, we went for a swim in the river and climbed soaking wet up into one of Sheva's temples. It was here that I stood, flailing in the wind, peering out over the great divide. Conan. Conquerer. Terminator. We climbed down, paddled on, and eventually docked. There was an old lady on the shore making chai, so we stopped for a drink. Delicious.

Lunch was at a famous place called the Mango Tree. There was great food, great drinks, great setting with an outlook over the cliffs, nestled in banana trees, and people had come from all over the world. I managed to strike up a conversation with some Russians, who seemed surprised that I knew where they were from. There were other travelers around, reading books, smoking cigarettes, drinking tea. It was a very relaxed environment and made for a nice resting point before our evening excursions.

Later that night as the sun go down, we climbed another majestic temple. We talked about how crazy it would have been to see this place in its heyday. There were bathhouses, giant platforms for music and dancing, markets, dining halls, even a small temple for beheading people. It was awesome. At one point, we descended into this pitch black underground lair where people were chanting. It was kind of scary. We didn't want them to know we were there, so we tiptoed through and out the other side. I had to use my whip to swing over a precipice in the ground, only barely managing to grab my hat before falling into a snake pit, all the while being chased by a giant boulder that had been sprung upon us by Nazis. I almost didn't make it our alive.

We watched the sun go down atop the tallest temple. You could see everything. It was beautiful.

That night, thanks to Basawa, we had a real sleeper bus for the trip back home. I had my own bed. Nolan and Tom had to share one. Bwhahahahahhaha. We each took some of my sleeping pills and the next thing I remember was a loud "Bangalore! Last stop! Everybody get out!" Took a rickshaw home and slept. A grand adventure indeed.