First trip: Badami, Aihole, HAMPI, Bijapur

So, here´s the deal, I´ll write in English, because I´m too lazy to translate all of this. Hope that´s fine for you guys.Okay, my first trip than. (I'll have to add some of the pics later, this PC is driving me nuts. So more pictures will come soon)

Day 1: Badami and Aihole
We left on saturday morning ( 1 am) in a much to small car- considering that we were 7 people plus the driver. The first hours we had to sort out how to sit :-). Laure (F), Friederike, Rick (D), Micha, Adam (P), Vincent (NL) and me went on this trip. In the late morning we arrived in Badami. All these cities we went to are situated in Karnataka, the state south of Maharashtra.Between the 4th and 7th century Badami was the capital of the Chalukyas, this is why you can find as many as 150 temples surrounding Badami. The most impressive were the caves (höhlentempel). They were situated opposite to each other and in the middle there was a lake. Women were washing there cloths there. We climbed up the hills and made a lot of foto´s. It was very nice.






Than we went to Aihole, a small village (maybe 3 streets in total) and had a look at the temples there. Aihole had been the first capital of the Chalukya-empire. There we saw the early beginnings of Hindu-architecture. I was kind of disappointed though, because everything was so widespread and the temples were rather small. We walked up to a temple on top of a hill and were followed by 30 kids. They all wanted rupies or chocolate. Wow. Weird. Some of our group didn´t ignore them, so that is why they followed us all of the time. I was glad when we were back in the car....Than we went to dirty Hospet, which is near Hampi. There we wanted to sleep. But---- no rooms! we could not believe it. It was already getting late and we had been travelling all day long, and no guesthouse had rooms free. What to do? We finally decided to ride further to Hampi. I called some guesthouses and luckily we found a place there. I shared the room with Laure and we went to bed immediately.

Day 2: HAMPI
The next day was our first day in Hampi. We had breakfast at the roof-restaurant of our guesthouse, from where we already had an excellent view of one of the biggest attractions: the Vittala-tempel:

(foto kommt noch)

It was build in the 16th century and is amazingly high. It belongs to the ´weltkulturerbe´. Of course we went inside and had a good look at it. There was also an elephant standing there, which would bless you. You had to give him 1 rupi and he would gently touch your head with his nose. I didn´t really like it, so I skipped that part. Than me, Rick and Vince walked up a small hill on the side of the temple, took some funny pixx there. On the other side we could see the river, which was full of water because of the mossun. Gladly we did not have any rain!! We hardly couldn´t believe it:SUN!For lunch we walked back to the bazaar where the restaurants were. The funny thing was, that all of them (!) had a banner saying: recommended in lonely planet (for those who don´t know lonely planet, namely my parents ;-): famous guide for different countries, loved by backpacking tourists). At first we tried to find one that did not say that it was recommended, but we stopped. Food was ok. Than one of my travelmates (Micha from Poland) got even more sick and we gently send him back to the hostel. 6 people left we went to see even more temples and the best part was climbing up a hill (matanga hill). On top of it was - you can guess it already- yet another temple. It was pretty high and so we climbed up (there were vague steps) to the middle, stayed there, enjoyed the views and then went further up. It was pretty windy, and almost at the top it was pretty scary, there was only a very narrow path and next to you...... "don´t look down!" was wat I was thinking. Still didn´t help. Mom, I know for sure you would have never gone there! So Laure was so nice to take my hand and walk together with me. Yep, I made it. And it was fantastic, eventhough my heart was bumping like hell. I can´t describe the view that we had. I have never seen something like this before. It was gorgeous!! On the way down Vince accompanied me and we walked real slow, it had rained for some minutes, so the steps were wet. We were glad when we were down again. But it was truly unbelievable.That night me and Adam took Micha to the doctor in a village nearby. We were a bit worried, he had fever. He got medicine and Laure and me played "private nurse", getting him tea, fresh juices, ´forcing´ him to eat something. It was a shame that he was sick and couldn´t enjoy Hampi!

Day 3 still Hampi

The next day we got up even earlier and rented scooters!3 scooters, the men riding, the girls at the back. Me and Vince went on one.

(pic vince and me)

It was soooooo much fun! The weather was great (I was damn sunburned from the day before, so I had to wear a bandana to cover my face, this is why I might look stupid in some of the following pixx.....) and we were cruising around in this beautiful landscape. In the morning all of us went together and I had my first experience in driving a scooter. cool!! At first slow and respectful but than I got better in it. I drove almost the whole day. We went to another site in Hampi called the royal centre, which had - of course- more temples. It was great.

(pixx 177,185, 201)

For lunch we met Micha, who was still sick. Than me and Vince split from the group and did our own program. We didn´t really want to wait all the time and I really wanted to cross the river, which the others were not so in favour of. We had a great time. First we finished looking at some temples and the big elephant stables (elefanten ställe).

(pixx 230, 217, 220)

Than we cruised around, got to the river, but no chance of crossing. The small boats couldn´t go, because the river was moving in a fast and violent stream. What a shame! We took a lot of pictures and had fun driving around. At the end of the day we went to a temple that was at the farest point from our the village. 10 min after Vince saying, that he hoped we had enough petrol left the scooter stopped! I was driving and Vince thought I was joking. But no. For real. In the middle of nowhere without fuel and no working mobile phones. At least a walk of 7-8 km back and less than 30 min left before we had to return the scooter. aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

(pixx 265, 270)

end of the story was, that Vince went with a rikshaw-driver and 5 people (I´ve been in a rik once with 4 people and that was really tight) to the village to get petrol. I stayed behind, because we didn´t want the scooter to be stolen. But all on my own waiting for Vince to return I was really glad when he arrived 1/2 an hour later!! He put the petrol... and..... nothing! we tries 15 times..... nada!...... than he remembered some trick he saw on the streets in Pune and finally it worked. I was sooooo relieved. We were both so happy! We finished the day with a decent meal with the whole group and than set outside for a while to talk. Unfortunalety all restaurants and bars closed at 2230 h so we couldn´t go anywhere. First we set on the street, but the dogs here in India are crazy and we got pretty scared after some time. So Vince took a broom (dt:besen) and I held something else while sitting there. Was not really relaxed of course. So than we went to bed. The day was great!

Day 4 driving back via Bijapur
Finally Micha felt better. We stepped into the car, turned on the music and danced and sang. Fun! We stopped at Bijapur at noon to see the two most recommended attractions of that town. The Golgumbaz was amazing. It had a cupola (dt: kuppel) with 38 m diameter. It is said that only the one in the Petersdom is bigger. But the best part was the ´whisper galery´. Up there you could here the other person talk, when you stood on exact opposite sides of each other. Me, Laure and Micha tried it and it worked. It was incredible that people in the 17th century had thought about acoustics so well.

(pixx 285, 101)

Then we got some beer and had a party in the car (during the whole trip we didn´t drink alc, because Hampi is such a religious village, that they don´t sell it). With Adam, Vince and me on 2 seats in the back of the car we fell asleep and arrived in Pune at 1 am.
I enjoyed the views, villages and the people I was with a lot!