Hampi - Part 1, Boulders

I arrived in Hampi the next morning, a little groggy, but alive.
Hampi is famous for its temples and its boulders and has plenty of both.
After the routine navigation of the chaotic bus-station, i boarded a small ferry and crossed the river to what i understood to be the less hectic side of town.
Having just left the relatively relaxing and chilled beaches of Goa, I was reluctant to throw myself immediately back into the potential stress and carnage of Indian street life.
The young boy manning the boat came round to collect money from us and said loudly that the last boat would be leaving at 6:30pm. There was no other way to cross the river - no bridges yet - and although the water looked swimable and the river was certainly not wide, someone had drowned the previous week trying to get back to their hotel late at night.
It looked like I would be on this bank for much of the day.

I got myself settled in my new hostel.
I had been warned off it by one of the locals who said that it was full of Israelis, but it didn't particularly bother me, and there didn't seem to be that many anyway.
It was still early morning, so I immediately hired a motorbike and took to the roads for the day. I had been told there was a beautiful reservoir that was good for swimming, and plenty of temples and boulders to look at, so set off on my newly acquired Yamaha to see what i could see.
I found a temple and climbed a nearby rocky outcrop to take in the view.
It appeared as though Hampi, as an area, was actually quite flat. It was, aside from these randomly scattered groups of huge, round granite rocks. They were distributed almost as if they were colossal grains of sand, sprinkled from above - some had collected in clumps, some balanced precariously on one another, and some stood alone. I figured that they must have some sort of geological reason for being, possibly to do with glaciers, but decided not to think about it too much - looking back on my geography classes always gives me an uneasy feeling.
They were breathtaking, and from my elevated position, despite the humidity diffusing the distant landscape, i could see for miles.

I decided that it was a good day for a swim.
I hadn't been diving properly since my accident in Vietnam over a year ago, and wanted to experience the sensation of jumping into water from a great height again. More than that, I wanted to see how I would react when confronted with the sight of water from high above and whether I would be scared or not. Diving is always something I have enjoyed immensely, and I decided that if it came to it, and I felt uncomfortable, I would confront my fear and dive anyway, pushing myself over the edge if i had to.
Experiences are not all there to be learnt from, after all, some should just be forgotten. I just had to find a safe spot.
I found the reservoir without much difficulty, but although i had been told lots of people swam there, it appeared deserted. I stood for a while on a large boulder that overlooked the water and considered my options. I was weighing it up in my head - the fact that no-one else was swimming, the fact that i had no idea how deep the water was, the fact that I could see no direct way back out of the water again, the fact that actually it really didn't look that inviting anyway - when a group of 3 local boys approached me with a cardboard box.
In his broken, but nonetheless very impressive English, the eldest one explained to me that they were selling fruit and crisps. He said that if i bought some, he would show me a good place to swim. I didn't really want any crisps, but the smallest kid looked pretty hungry, so i bought some and gave the pack to him. He tore into them and only offered his friends some when he'd gotten down to the crumbs at the bottom.
The older boy tried to get me to buy a pineapple too, but i told him i wasn't hungry. The small boy looked a little disappointed.
"So... Where is good to swim?" I asked.
"There," said the boy, pointing at the water behind me and the rock that i'd been standing on earlier.
I was unsure whether he was having me on or not, but made a show of looking down at the water and assessing its suitability.
It did look deep, but i was pretty high up on a large round boulder, and i could see no way that even if i'd survived the fall, i'd have been able to get back out again. I suspected, perhaps slightly too paranoid, that the boys were trying to get me into the water so they could nick my bag, wallet and motorbike and sell it all for crisps and fruit.
It was starting to cloud over anyway. I told them i'd come back tomorrow.
The oldest boy demanded a cigarette as some bizarre form of compensation. I felt a little bad about giving him one, as he couldn't have been more than about 10, but remembering that he was probably a thief, the compunction suddenly left me and I handed one over, free of any momentary scruples at potentially shortening his life by a few minutes.

I stopped again in a small town to buy some water and a snack.
A woman at a small stall was battering and deep-frying raw green chillis. There didn't seem to be anything else on offer, so I pointed and gestured and she wrapped me up some in a piece of newspaper. They were incredibly hot, unsurprisingly, and I immediately bought a cup of chai to wash them down with.
I sat down, and as I ate, was slowly surrounded by a group of kids, variously aged 3-8, in immaculate school uniforms. They pulled at my clothes and hassled me for money. I told them I had nothing to give, knowing that i'd be there all day if I showed them so much as a rupee. Their request changed.
"Schoolpen, schoolpen!" They shouted. One of them held out his hand.
I fished in my bag for a biro and handed it over to him.
He cheered and held it aloft with the other kids surrounding him, trying to grab it. He held on and ran back down the street with the others following.
I pictured him being the most popular boy in class that day, his special new red bic on show in his top shirt pocket. Perhaps as a consequence of my gift, he would decide to study hard and go on to excel in school. I also considered that as soon as he'd rounded the corner, out of my line of sight, he might have been set upon and beaten senseless by his classmates.
Either way, I felt that I had somehow contributed to that small boy's ever growing sphere of experience - learning the lesson that study and diligence at school is important, or heeding the warning that you should never take gifts from strange men - I felt a warm glow inside.
It could have just been the chillis though.

The evening on my side of the river seemed pretty quiet.
Evidently most of the nightlife, including evening festivals and parades, happened on the other side of the river.
I found a restaurant and sat down next to a table of people that i recognised from the previous night's bus journey - the woman that had been dispensing valium, her boyfriend and 3 Canadians. We discussed the bus crash as the woman, Polly, negotiated with the waiter to mix hash into our lassis.
I ordered a chicken dish and was interested to see that they made freshly squeezed garlic and chilli juice, so ordered a glass to wash it down with. It tasted exactly as you'd imagine, but perhaps slightly better - surprisingly good actually.
One of the Canadians rolled a joint.
Apparently the bus driver had been the only person to have been seriously injured in the previous night's crash. Having been removed from the wreckage, he had been brought onto our bus and dropped off at the first hospital we'd passed. Apparently we'd stopped there for some time, but by this time i was asleep.
The time between the accident and him receiving actual professional medical help had been about 5 hours. This seemed quite amazing to me, as the roads had been awful, the accident had happened in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, there were no ambulances, and i imagined hospitals to be somewhat of a scarcity in the area.
A young British woman from another table joined in the conversation. She was a doctor, she proclaimed - as doctors often do, apropos of nothing - and was working out here for a year. She agreed with everything that everyone said about Indian hospitals. She added very little to the actual conversation other than giving us her profession.
She told us extensively about her placement in India and the kind of work she was likely to be doing. Her boyfriend, a slightly repressed and fearful Simon Pegg lookalike, said nothing. My other tablemates slowly drifted off to their respective beds in the neighbouring hostels, and I was left with this couple, Jen and Nathan.
Despite the fact that all she appeared to do was talk about herself and belittle her boyfriend infront of me, I gradually warmed to them and their odd dynamic. She left to go to the toilet, and I asked Nathan what he was intending to do when Jen's job resumed in a few weeks. He didn't seem to know, and as a graphic designer, felt that he was unlikely to get particularly well paid work out here. He didn't seem to like the idea of doing charity work or teaching, and sounded like in all likelihood he would probably head back to London. She returned and our conversation changed mid-sentence.
She sat down.
Nathan said, "I was just telling him about that dinner we went to last week."
He nodded at me, asking me to be complicit in his little lie. He hadn't been telling me anything of the sort. I suspected that he had yet to reveal to his girlfriend that he wasn't planning on staying in India for the next year with her, although i have no idea why he'd had a momentary lapse and all but admitted it to me.
He continued on with the story of the dinner, which, whether he'd actually planned to tell me or merely panicked when he saw her approaching, is irrelevant because it had me enthralled and in hysterics within seconds:

A surgeon at Jen's hospital in Delhi had invited them to dinner at his family home.
After some polite chit-chat and a drink, he'd brought them into his living room where there was a big pad of paper on an easel set up. What they had been assured would be a simple dinner then turned into some sort of bizarre catalogue-based pyramid-scheme sales pitch. The surgeon drew diagrams and told them what a solid investment it all was, and his wife nodded excitedly and showed them various products from the catalogues. After an hour or so, by which time Jen and Nathan's ability to feign interest had slowly diminished, they managed to convince them politely that they were not interested in investment and were actually quite hungry.
The host understood respectfully, stowed away his pad of paper and ushered them into the dining room with a shower of apologies.
They sat down for dinner and as they ate and chatted, Nathan noticed a large shrine on the mantlepiece. It was a stone head with pillars either side of it, and the family had covered it in photos of themselves and their children, flowers, burning candles and josticks.
Nathan asked about it, mentioning that he found it to be strangely familiar, and the surgeon proudly told them how it had been there when they'd moved in over 20 years ago. They had found it on the floor in the corner elsewhere in the house, but decided that it was really quite exquisite and wanted to make it the focal point of their dining room.
It stared at him throughout dinner, and when they'd finished eating, Nathan, his curiosity still unsatisfied, asked if he could have a closer look.
Their hosts of course agreed and made themselves busy pouring coffee.
As Nathan examined it, it became quickly obvious that it was not in fact carved from stone, but was actually moulded from lightweight plastic. Upon even further inspection, he discovered a trademark symbol and a "Masters of the Universe" insignia.
This family of well-educated and well-respected medics had appreciated the aesthetic qualities of this item sufficiently to show it off and place it in pride of place. It had been adorning their mantlepiece for two decades as if it were some beautiful ancient artifact.
It was, in fact, a plastic toy model of Castle Greyskull, the home of He-Man from the 1980s TV cartoon.
Nathan sat down and silently drank his coffee. He didn't mention the shrine again until later, when he and Jen were well away from the house and its hosts.

I thought it was one of the funniest stories I'd ever heard and laughed all the way back to my hostel. Of course, it could have been the laced lassis or the joint, but even now, I can't help but crack a smile when I picture the the surgeon and his wife lighting their ceremonial candles and incense.