Photo Mmmmmm

Photo Bathroom

check out the water heater!!

Hyderabad

We had to get back to Hyderabad. This time we booked AC sleeper which was a little more expensive but boy was it worth it. Curtains across the beds, padded chairs, air conditioning (suprisingly not too cold) and bedding provided in a little brown paper parcel all freshly laundered. The caterers didn't shout and the first Chai wallah didn't arrive 'till 0730 in the morning, do it people it's worth it. Nothing seemed to be progressing with the car and it had become obvious that we would have to extend our visas (oh joy). 2 and 1/2 weeks after telling us it would take about 20 days to get the parts, Toyota in Hyderabad 'fessed up that they had in fact failed miserably to even find out the part numbers. A quick internet search and a couple of calls and we'd managed to find not only the parts but the part numbers aswell, on imparting this infomation to Toyota they suggested it might be quicker to get the parts ourselves!!? The wonder of e-bay and friends in Brisbane and Much Haddham (real place, not made up(cheers Thea Jamie and Julian) and the parts are now being DHL'd to us here in Hyderabad. The really annoying part of this is that if we had ordered the parts to start with we wouldn't be here now. We're now in a shitty hotel, we could pay more and stay somewhere else but to be perfectly honest it would only be a different degree of shitty, and have been trying to keep our spirits up by tracking our parcel online and going to the cinema (Transformers 2 on Imax screen probably the closest I'll ever get to Megan Fox!!). Of course we have been going through the process of extending our visas aswell.

Photo Hampi

Photo Hampi

Was going to make some crack about the Hindu space programme but seeing as they've got a space craft orbiting the moon thought better of it.

Photo Hampi

Ganesh carved from one boulder.

Photo Hampi

Photo Hampi

Photo Hampi

Photo Hampi

Photo Hampi

Hampi

No one ever said it was going to be easy (thanks for reminding us Julian;)) but for gods sake why do the Indians have to make everything so bloody difficult. Why can't you just approach a rickshaw driver instead of being hassled by them, and just say where you want to go, get in, get there and just pay a reasonable price. No, you have to go through the whole rigmarole of negotiating a price, of course they start of with something extortionate and you go from there. Normally this process is done light hearted and with some fun but here they just seem to want to rip you off, they think we're all millionaires, no really. Any how, we lucked into two rickshaws that needed to get to where we wanted to go so we hopped in. Then you start the fricken thing again when you get to a guesthouse! I deal with all of this by shutting up generally and letting Kym get mad at 'em but every now and then you just can't help going past frustrated and trying to point out to the person your dealing with the futility of the situation. Of course they have no idea what your talking about. Back to being quiet then!

Hampi was pretty cool in a sort of jungle book way, falling down temples surrendering to lush green vegetation with a beautiful river running through it in amongst a huge granite boulder landscape. Could have done with the king of swingers to cheer us up though. It's a huge area and the ruins are spread over miles so we hired bikes and went off cycling. Damn it was hot, and hilly, and no gears; but fun. The photo's do the place more justice than I can so check 'em out. The big tall temple is still very much in use and is a big religious pilgrimage site for Hindus and Jains alike (strictly no meat or alcohol in Hampi, but the hostels do serve "special drinks"!?) We were staying only a few yards from the temple so got used to seeing all the sadhus, babas and devotional pilgrims walking about in their meagre saffron robes with there painted faces asking for money from tourists to have a photo taken (guileless charlatans).

Photo Great scenery

Photo comfy?

Photo Waterfall

Photo Steve and Sarah discussing who's going on top.

Leaving John and Pema

Rattling along

First train journey was 18hrs. 1035 Thur arr 0615 Fri. Then a 1 hr wait and another 7hrs to our final destination Hospet which is Hampi's station. Neither of us was particularly looking forward to it but it served a purposed and got us moving again, plus we had Steve and Sarah as company. We'd booked sleeper class which I will do my best to describe. Imagine the old style carriages with separate compartments take away the compartment doors then on each side of the compartment put 3 bunks. The middle bunk folds up during the day so the bottom bunk becomes a 3 person (make that 5 Indians) bench seat. The top bunk is too close to the ceiling to sit up on. Now imagine outside the compartment there are two more bunks running along the side of the corridor. Don't forget to take away the fact that there are no doors or partitions and you hopefully have a vague picture of sleeper class. Now add plastic covered seats and vertical backs with a minuscule amount of padding, cockroaches, barred open windows and "caterers" walking past every 30 seconds shouting chai chai chai coffee coffee coffee bhaji bhaji bhaji etc etc etc and on top of that hundreds of dark brown eyes staring at you. It was all quite an experience...... for about 45 seconds. Somehow we got some sleep (unbelievably it actually goes quiet from about 2300 - 0430) and after breakfast of puffed pastry things (I've no idea) and chai at Madgaon station we hopped on the next train which was far less busy and rattled up on to the Deccan plateau through amazing scenery even passing under waterfalls. Steve having confessed to no sleep the night before climbed on to the top bunk and did a good impression of a corpse (so good that Sarah actually checked he was still breathing a couple of times!) so missing all of this. Kym and Sarah did what girls do best so I put the headphones on and blissed out to an hour of Cat Power.

Photo-L-R Sarah, Steve, Kym and Tyler the Cali kid.