Hampi

I’ve been looking forward to visiting Hampi very much and I must say; it didn’t disappoint me. It’s a small town and actually… a very flat one. The very first thing I noticed was that there were no houses taller than 1 storey. Very strange infrastructure when there is a problem of overpopulation and rowdiness in the country. Apparently this is the downside of democracy; unless people agree to have their small houses demolished, there will be no new houses and blocks of flats built instead, because at the moment there is no room to do so.
Hampi is a natural miracle to me. I do not comprehend how rocks so enormous could have developed in such a way. The whole area looks as if giants were fighting and left the scene scattered with huge rounded rocks all over the place in a complete mess. Otherwise Hampi is mostly known for it’s ruins of many stone temples. People here had plenty of material to work with. I realized that in India the most ancient cities were developed firstly where there was good building material for temples and only secondly where there was water. :) It gets very impressive when you find out that all constructing material (rocks) were cracked by pouring water in them through holes made with some very hard wood. I honestly don’t understand how this worked…





Boy, there are so many cows in Hampi! This is a cow heaven and they are beautiful. :) AND I managed to find out what they eat!!! At every street corner there is a concrete container where households and restaurants throw their greens and edible waste (this includes paper as well), however I haven’t seen this in any other city, so the mystery still isn't completely solved.
I was lucky enough to get involved in the celebration of Holy, which consisted of color fights all Monday morning. Wow, that was so much fun! It could have been much more fun if Judy was here with me instead of Zoli (he remained the only clean person in the town) but never mind. I might return one day…









I got covered in paint from head to toe in such a way that not even petrol would remove my greenness. Basically everybody gets different colored powder and tries to get it on as many people as possible. The color gets rather permanent when mixed with water. The color fun is accompanied with loud cheering and rhythmic drum beat and dancing. It's frenetic! I consider myself lucky to have been part of this, even if it resulted in throwing away one of my dresses.
Zoli didn’t build nice memories of this city, since he spent two out of four days going to the loo every 20 minutes. (I shouldn’t share this with you…) He hates me for not having stomach problems, for being able to eat tons of everything and for not even putting on weight. Let’s hope it’ll stay this way.
A little bit too late, but I found out the trick of washing off the paint. Funnily enough only tourists were walking around the Hampi still covered in paint. The locals were washed clean within hours after the event. Basically you have to rub some sort of oil or grease on your entire body to avoid dying yourself semi-permanently colorful.

















This is Lakshmi (the temple elephant) getting a bath just after sunrise. She cleverly blesses people with a gentle tap of her trunk on their heads when she is given a coin.