But now to our trip, we started this time from the Majestic bus station in Bangalore, which is the main starting point for bus travels. I never saw such a big number of buses who from left to right, from right to left or just across the streets. And the rest of the free space was populated by people either waiting for their bus on one of the snack shops or rushing around. While we were looking for our bus, everybody who we asked, directed us to another place. Fortunately, the bus stand written on the ticket was the right one, and the bus came finally. The night drive was quite ok, although the bus had seen its better days at least 20 years ago! We were the only ones who drove up to Hampi, the rest of the passengers left us in Hospet, and the bus driver explained us a bit about Hampi before we arrived. At 9am at the final bus stop we had a hard time to get out of the bus, because we had to tell the 20 auto drivers that we were not interested in their service, and that we did not need nay maps or post cards...I think another reason for their persistence was that I was accompanied by four women!
Finally they let us out and we found one guy who could show us a place to have breakfast and, more important, a bicycle rental. Strengthened, we started our tour with our bicycles, and already after 5 min we saw the first interesting site, which was an underground temple and the Krishna temple (one of the main temples). It would be too exhaustive to write about every single site we saw, so the best is, to let the pictures tell the story...
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| trip ro Hampi |
In addition to the amazing ruins and temples, we were astonished by the nature with the rocks, which looked like stapled, the palm trees and the variety of animals. The weather was perfect for a bicycle ride and it only rained for a short while after lunch. At the river, we had to take the "ferry", because the bridge was destroyed a few years ago during a heavy monsoon. It was interesting to see how they managed to put that many motorbikes, people and our bicycles on such a small boat. The way back to the village was a little adventure, because we decided to take a shortcut. This way brought us away from the street including carrying the bikes over steps, and conducted us alongside the river, passing by nice water washed rocks, and lonely temples. And after some while, when our Indian friend became already nervous, we turned around a corner and stood at the temple at the beginning of the main street of Hampi. We had to shoot a last group photo with Indians (especially the girls were asked numerous times for a photo during the whole tour), gave back our bikes and started SHOPPING! One hour later, we all had some clothes or souvenirs in our bags, and went for dinner in one of the small restaurants. The way back to Bangalore was smooth and at the main bus station Majestics, we fortunately got at 5am without waiting a bus which drove us directly back home and to the institute, respectively. After a refreshing jogging round, I could start the new day with loads of energy and plenty of impressions from Hampi.
