Happy Holi from Hampi!!

Wow!! What a celebration!!! Holi is one of the most ecstatic of all the festivals, because it is a celebration of the beginning of spring, hence lots of colors. Yes, it is another excuse to have a big party, he he, and you'll often hear it being referred to as the "Festival of Colors." You'll see why with my pictures below!!

I've heard so many different versions of the meaning behind Holi... Most common is like I said, a celebration of spring, another one is that once you wash off all the colors, you are washing sin from your body. It is also known as a "good over evil" celebration. Either way, it is a celebration across the globe where it is happy and fun! Helloo? How often can you throw/splash powdered colors (gulal is the name here) at people and it is more than welcomed? :-)

The night before there are typically bonfires to symbolize the demise of the evil demon Holika. And the next day, Holi, the celebration of good and spring! The North of India is known for it's wild celebrations, and can last up to 5 days, which I think is crazy. Here in the South, since there are such a mix of religions, it is celebrated, but more low-key. Hampi is divided in 2 sections, the bazaar side and then the village across the river. Many tourists, as myself, stay across the river because it is quiet, super green with rice plantations, and just lovely. So basically at 9am a local band comes around, actually started at my guesthouse, and then plays awesome drum music and people just dance, throw colors, and then as the group walks through the village. The group accumulates and everyone is just having fun.. throwing colors at each other.

Here I took some before and after pics:

Yes, I threw that dress away (bought it for $2) and no, the dye did not come off as easily as I thought after my preparation of putting coconut oil over my body to help wash it off. Oh well. :-)

So here are some pics that just capture it all, 'nuff said:

(in case you can't tell, that is me above!)

(me again on the right!)

(my poor hands! It takes days to get the color off!)

(this was fun, everyone just joined together to dance to the drum music!)

(Never thought I would not only go into a dirty river in India, but actually wash myself! Ha!)

Overall, I have to say how impressed I was with how nice everything was. The kids were just soo super cute and innocent and having fun. NOT asking for money or pens or just being annoying. The Indian men did NOT take the opportunity to grope woman, as I would have thought. Instead they were sweet and would put paint on the face or arms, NOT anywhere else. Everyone was just having fun and again, it is a VERY good thing the festival is celebrated from 9-1ish, and NOT at night!

So Happy Holi everyone!!!

I'm off to Bangalore next, then will continue my land-only journey from Mumbai to Chennai. Stay tuned, although it might be a few weeks!!

Some Like it Hot! Hot! Hot!

Some Like it Hot is one of my favorite classic movies with Marilyn Monroe, and I got a glimpse of what it is like to be famous. Sorry Marilyn or anyone famous, it is not for me.

Having been to Asia in previous years as well as this being my 5th month in Asia, I am used to the stares, cat-calls, and random people approaching you with the usual "what is your country?" "What is your name?" BUT Bijapur was something else. I probably should have suspected this when I was in Mumbai and everyone who I told that I was going to Bijapur said, "where?" When I got there, and the 2 days that I was there, it was something else. It was stares and gawks x100 of what I had before, MUCH more catcalling and yelling, AND I literally couldn't walk more than about 1 meter before some kind of interaction of a local trying to get my attention, or very obviously, but trying to be discreet, taking my picture. The 1st day I went to the "main" thing to do, this is basically when people said, "why are you going there?" And I would reply, "to see the Gol Gumbaz!" And after the blank stare, I would then say, "the largest dome in the world after St. Peter's Basilica in Rome AND it also happens to be a mausoleum!!!" Which FYI, dates back to the 1600's and has the tombs of the emperor Muhammad Adil Shah and his 2 wives and other family members. Not too much excitement after that, but hey, I tried :-) What Gol Gumbaz is especially known for though is the "whispering" gallery. If you whisper in the wall within the dome, a person on the opposite side of the gallery can hear you like you are right next to them. I witnessed this when I sat on a bench and could hear a conversation from the bench across the way. Too bad it was in Hindi, otherwise it would have been funny (for me at least) to butt in their conversation, "I concur!!" hehehe.

          

Anyhoo, then started the picture taking. One person asked me and I kinda waved them off. Then another... then another. I then was feeling a bit bored, so I thought, "why not?" Note to self, don't do things like that. Once I accepted one person to take my picture (which probably were taking it anyway behind my back), next thing you know, there literally was a line. No joke. It was a bunch of teens and they were getting such a kick out of it, that I couldn't help but be amused myself. Until I was about to pass out from the heat and the locals would still not stop, "too hot! No more pictures!" Then I don't even finish the sentence and someone stands next to me for a pose. Oh well. I even went into a museum for a break, and even though it wasn't the most exciting of them all, I spent time to read each and every description. Why? Because a couple of them followed me in there and when I was reading, they just stood by quietly. Then when I turned away to go to the next artifact, they started to chat with me. Then when I stood in front of another object, they would stop and wait until I finished. I give them an A+ for patience, and actually it was somewhat entertaining. Here's one in which I asked them to be in my picture!

          

I barely escaped and fortunately, lo and behold, found another Westerner, who I could share this attention with. But boy, between the 2 of us, might as well shut down the city! But anyway, it was good to have someone that had some sense of direction and we walked around a lot and just kinda absorbed the sites of Bijapur. Yes, it may not be on any tourist circle, but it has some pretty cool sites. I'll try not to bore you with details about each and every one of them because it is boring even to me, but just try to highlight what I thought was cool or interesting:

One of my favorite sites of Bijapur, mostly because it was one of the few places that had green (gasp!), like grass and flowers, was the Ibrahim  Rouza, with big domes and is the "resting" place of an Adil Shani and his spiritual advisor. Hmm.... another note to self, be a spiritual advisor to a general to get this beautiful monument built for me!

(to give you an idea of the scale, can you even see me?)

The Jama Masjid,

The Malik-e-Maidan is this big-o-cannon that weighs 55 tonnes, is 4m long and is 1.5m in diameter. Daang! The more interesting thing is how it was transported to Bijapur - by 10 elephants, 400 oxen, and hundreds of men. Wow!!!

And here are just a few snaps I took of life around Bijapur... from using these old school machines to make sugar cane juice to the local adjusting his hat and shirt when I asked to take his picture to the market area to cute local kids to a woman using the one of the few ourdoor public phones.

After having my day-in-the-life of being probably about .002% of what it was like to actually be Marilyn Monroe, then came the Hot! Hot! Hot! part. Went to Hampi, aaaaaannnnnd wow! I thought Bijapur was hot, but I could handle it. That 1st day in Hampi, I literally almost had a heat stroke... before 10am. Fortunately, I met another traveler to go around the temples and he was more than happy to take rest breaks... every 5-10 minutes and share water, but wow! I guess this age thing isn't as fun as I thought, never was so sensitive to heat like this. I DID get better as the days passed, fortunately. And whoever would have thought that a body can withstand no less than 6L of water today without going to pee? Oops, sorry if that is too much information! :-)

Hampi was just amazing and there is nothing more to say than, "if you're in India, go to Hampi." Many travelers I met said that, and I took it with a grain of salt. But after being there, I can see why they said that. 1st off, it was sooooooooooooo easy to meet people. Actually, almost too easy. Tons of backpackers from all walks of life. The funny thing about travelers in India, is that it is NOT a place where people just go for a couple of weeks. MOST people I met were traveling for 6+ months, and some more. Met a fellow who had been on the road for 3 years! Impressive. So me feeling proud about my 9 months was quickly overshadowed because that is nothing new. Good to put me in my place, right? Next thing, which is the biggest thing, is Hampi is in the middle of heaps of giant boulders that stretch for miles and miles. So amongst these boulders that range from being the size of a building to the size of a water bottle is banana and rice plantations. You don't even know how many conversations about "how did the rocks get here?" (mostly sober, ha ha). What the consensus seems to be is that it came about from million of years of volcanic activity and erosion to make the landscape so interesting. I've seen what seems like a thousand World Heritage Sites, but this one definitely deserves it.

I stayed opposite the river just so I can have some green around me. It was soo nice to fall asleep to frogs, crickets and other nature sounds. BUT.... I still can't get over it, it is another story when a frog is actually in your bed! No joke. I was in bed writing in my planner, tucked in the mosquito net, and I look over and.... there is a frog about a yard away from me! I slowly got out of bed to get the camera, but the lighting was bad and the frog moved every time that red light came on. Darn it! Then I had to make a little opening in the mosquito net so it could jump out, which it did. But it was sooooooooo soooo funny! How in the world it got there, who knows!!!!

Back in the 1300's, Hampi was the capital of Karnataka, the state of where I am. Over the next couple of centuries, yes centuries, it grew to be one of the largest Hindu empires in Indian history. It used to house 1/2 a million people and have thriving bazaars and tons of commerce, etc. After that, it is a bit vague with all these stories about different gods and what not, but basically in the 1600's havoc broke lose and the empire collapsed and it just never recovered. So there are hundreds... and hundreds of temples and monuments. It is quite overwhelming. When I got there, I was in my ambitious phase and despite almost having a heat stroke, still tried to see the "bigger" more important ones (timing it early in the morning or late afternoon). BUT then, it was funny because literally most all the travelers I had met, including those that had been there for weeks, hadn't even seen the temples. I would then ask, "what do you do all day?" Ahhh.... the infamous question. Then I would get the reply, "just hang out!" Hey, I could do that!

Gotta love hippie travelers. So then I decided to back off a bit and just hang out, and yes! The days passed and I still had a blast! Went to lake to cool off and of course boyz in the group were jumping off the boulders,

(Have to admit, I'm pretty proud of this shot!!)

a river, and just chatted with people from all walks of life. So yes, now I see how "doing nothing" can actually be a pretty cool thing!

There is too much here in Hampi, so again, I'll just try to pinpoint the highlights of my time there with some photos. It is somewhat of a hodgepodge of pictures because I felt like I was on the verge of a heat stroke for most of the temple sightseeing and.... I hate to admit it, buuuuuut some of them look too similiar to differentiate which exact temple it was. Oops! Anyhoo, the main ones were the Virupaksha Temple, the city's oldest, Achyutaraya Temple, the Royal Centre and the Elephant Stables, and the Vittala Temple.

(Virupaksha Temple)

(Virupaksha Temple)

(Royal Centre)

(Elephant Stables from the Roya Centre. The state elephants used to stay there. Pretty well intact!)

(Vittala Temple, a 16th century temple, and in fairly good condition)

(This is the Vittala Temple's elephant. They bathe him in the morning, and he just hangs out here all day)

And of course got to see plenty of sunsets. One of the better ones is from the Monkey Temple. It was one of those things where we had decided to go earlier, the hours just kinda passed. Then we realized it was getting late. We ran to get bikes, went without stopping, and rather quickly the 5-6K to get to the temple to have 600+ steps awaiting us. Mind you, I am not in the best shape... and am older than the other people I was with. However, as always, the journey was well worth it and we made it to watch the sunset. Awww! (the 1st and last picture below are from the Monkey Temple).

Next action is the Holi festival! I'm prepped with colored paint, a $2 dress to throw away afterwards, scarf and plastic bag to cover my hair (for blondes the word is that it stains for 4-6 months!), and coconut oil for my body to try to avoid too much stained paint on my skin!