This tactic doesn't always work, like it works when you don't want to talk to the person sharing a seat with you.
When this tactic doesn't work and you are still curled into a small ball with your eyes closed being hurled through space at the mercy of strangers, you tend to discover yourself somewhere, and you look at your history and see all of your flaws and personal limitations.
I've said it before - India is honest. And India makes you face yourself, each time she throws something new your way. You have to face yourself, your abilities, and all of your flaws, more than you have to face anything else. You confront your limits, and then you wonder to the rushing world that is changing, passing you by outside the dark window, what do I do now that I have acknowledged my flaws? How many limits do I really have? What exactly am I capable of?
I got a sunburn this weekend. My nose has started peeling. This is because I'm on malaria pills, doxycycline, to be exact, and they make you sensitive to the sun.
I got this sunburn in one of the most fantastic places I have ever been - Hampi.
(I've taken a lot of photos during my stay here and during the picture downloading process, my computer informed me that my startup disk was almost full. In the meantime, my pictures didn't all download, but they disappeared off of my camera. I'm sorry :( I wish they would come back so I can show you.)
Hampi is no exception to India's dichotomous situation of sorts - we stayed in a tropical hut, where the toilet and shower curtain-less shower are in behind the same door, where we put down the canopy over our bed to keep out the bugs, where we only had power after 1 in the afternoon and we took freezing cold showers after long sweaty days climbing the arid mountains made purely of huge boulders, rocks, stacked by the great Mother in precarious positions, mountains that make you gasp because these aren't like any mountains you have ever imagined, that stretch out for miles, mountains that you climb up after crossing a sacred river in a round coracle boat, made of bamboo and tar, moving towards rice paddy fields and banana tree fields that line the banks of the river where people bath in the holy water and wash their clothes, towards the foot of the mountain, to climb to the top, to a temple, to an ashram, to a fort, to a haven, where what you see for as far as the eye can see are the remains of those who came before and left us remnants tucked away in the far corners of these stony mountains, only the pillars of beliefs revealing to us the power of ability and devotion.
It is the work of something far greater than yourself, of people long ago with hopes and dreams and beliefs and devotion to those things at work that are indeed, far greater than anything we can ever imagine.
We got to Hampi early Friday
and we ate breakfast, watching all of the different types of people passing us by at a very early hour that somehow didn't seem to affect these people, tourists and locals alike. We didn't know that we would soon be like them, up early, soaking in everything that Hampi had to offer.
Friday was also a national holiday in honor of Shiva the Destroyer, Maha Shivaratri where everyone goes to the temple, fasts, doesn't sleep, and gets high for a whole day and night off of these pot milkshakes.
We missed this celebration because we stayed on the other side of the holy river and the boats stopped going at 6 pm, but we heard it was wild to see. Elephants and cows were just running loose, policemen shaking unresponsive babies, thousands of people everywhere.
Right - we stayed in huts - food. check. shelter? cross the river.
What we saw next:
our transportation to and from the home base
People washing clothes and bodies. They wash them similarly, strangely enough. The clothes they send out, and reel back in only to smoosh the clothing into a small ball and throw it continuously onto the rocks, beating the dirt, the filth, the impurities out of the cloth. They repeated this times 50. The people... they wash by hunching their shoulders, crossing one arm over their chest, holding the nose with the other and then face plant into the water, suction cup the water back up as they pull away but the cave their chest makes holds the water there, repeatedly, beating their bodies against the water, to finish off by just tossing handfuls of water onto their body.
We ended up here:
With a window view of this:
powder for decorations
Bells for prayer and puja
The main temple devoted to Shivaratri is behind me in this picture, this is just the gate we passed through. The pictures of the actual temple disappeared off my camera :(
This is a large, sweet root.
We did some shopping and Riane got molested by the tailor. Looking back on it, we should have yelled at the man for what he did, but we were so appalled that we decided to take pictures of pantsless Riane in a man's shop where no Indian girl would ever be expected to take off her clothes for measurements. It was funny at the time, it is horrifying now.
We caught a glimpse of daily life as we wandered the alleys and twisty walkways of India:
Then we hopped back to our boat because we had to cross the river back to our huts by 6 pm.
We woke up to see the sunrise.
We waited and waited and just as we were leaving, the sun poked up from behind one of the mountains, and ascended into the sky faster than any sunrise I have ever seen. And it's funny, but instead of being in that moment, in Hampi, on a boulder with a man doing yoga behind me, watching the sunrise, I was in Bishopville, the summer my brother shot off fireworks in the cotton field and set something like 5 acres on fire. We couldn't get it to stop. We just had to watch it burn away the field.
And that is how I felt about the sunrise. It didn't matter how much I wanted that moment to freeze in time, to make the sun stop right there, the sun burning away the morning haze in the horizon, it was going to rise, bright red, until it filled the sky with light and woke the world.
And we moved on, too, because with light came heat and it sizzled me.
Jessica and I got separated from the group and remained that way all day. The first thing we did was find ourselves bartering over a trip to the Hanuman monkey temple in a river coracle. We thought we were getting deal when we agree to 600 Rs. total trip - there, waiting for us, and back. we found out later from our trusty Lonely Planet that coracle rides should cost like 20 Rs... life of a foreigner.
Anyways, we liked our paddler man. He is married, he bought this coracle, he told us about the whirlpools and the Shiva Lingas (dancing places!!) and asked us questions about our homes and lives - he was sooo nice, he even let Jessica paddle us to our destination (she wasn't quite as adept at paddling as he was... we ended up in the bushes a few times):
The way to the base of the Hanuman temple mountain.
On top of the mountain, after some rock climbing.
I took a picture of the 675 stairs we had to climb - that photo disappeared too.
I hope cyberspace sends some of those pics back.
Anyway, our coracle guide told us 675 stairs - a little kid tried to follow us as a "guide" and told us that there were 575 stairs, then he changed it to 597 stairs and so Jessica gave him a dose of his own guiding abilities and forced him to listen to her guide him about this temple and when she got to the point "no, let me tell you: this dog here built this temple" pointing to a golden retriever-ish dog that boy ran back down the mountain in a huff and we were left in peace.
Back down the mountain, we go to another temple and instead of going in - we decide to eat raspberry ice cream pops.
Surreal moment when you are sitting there licking off raspberry popsicle from your knuckles in the shade of an old stone building across from a temple that has been deemed a World Heritage Site and you look about you at the ruins of Hampi in India, and are then offered some puja offerings from an old lady who sits down next to you and you have to accept the food even though it could potentially kill you because it would be rude to waste and refuse a gift, especially one that is meant for the gods.
We proceeded to climb the next mountain to an ashram of which god we do not know. We met some french guys at the top who were shirtless and made all of the Indian women looking around the ashram giggle and run away. Seriously, they covered their faces and eyes, giggling, turned on their heels and ran away.
There goes Jessica and chai man up the mountain towards the ashram.
My lack of pictures makes me so sad :(
this man sleeps on top of the mountain so he can be there when people trek up the mountain to watch the sunrise. "chai, i give you good price in morning."
We headed down to meet the group (after getting lost on the various paths and walking through a visibly deserted village that was recently occupied..) to eat another dinner on the ground and compared stories of all the different things done and seen in India on Saturday (all of the restaurants, you sit on the ground and eat. cool.)
Jessica, Riane and I heard music on the way back to the house and went to see what it was and we were delighted to be invited into a safe haven for Jews and Israelites to come and stay in Hampi for as long as they like for free board and free food. They have these places everywhere they told us - China, Japan, the US, etc. and everyone is traveling. We exchanged some stories and info, they gave us delicious tea. But we had to leave because Hampi bugs are out to kill you and we were dying from the bug bites.
But, I can tell you - I have yet to meet a Jew or Israelite I don't like. They are cool people.
We immediately fell into bed as soon as we got to our hut.
End of day, end of post. I'll post more tomorrow. I'll try to recover my other photos too.
lovelove
