Hampi, Karnataka, India

It has been a great week in India. I left Goa on Monday and headed inland to Hampi. This town is known for its amazing temples. Many dating back 400-500 years. I hung out this week with two new friends, Kate from Australia and Lukas from Austria. We were on the same bus from Goa to Hampi and then stayed at the same place, the Sai Plaza. It was affordable, good food and views of the temples from the eating area. I was together with Kate and Lukas for most of the week. We spent two days touring the temples, one of the days we hired a rickshaw to take us from one temple to another. On the last day of temple gazing, we came upon this one that had a great sitting area, I could just picture people sitting there and chatting over the past 500 years. We sat there for ages chatting, it was very quiet with only a few people around. The landscape in Hampi is very unique, someone in Goa told me it was like landing on the moon. It reminds me of the Matobos Hills in Southern Zimbabwe, scattered boulders everywhere. On Thursday (maybe Wednesday) I think it was we rented little mopeds. It reminded me of riding a lawn mower. It had very little power and maximum speed topped out at about 50kph. We were told at the beginning of the day that we had gas for about 75km. We were riding for many hours, and the odometer did not work, so it was hard to tell how far we had gone..... you know where this is leading.... on the way back, Lukas and Kate's moped died. He took mine and went to get gas, which wasn't much of a problem and we were soon on our way back to the guest house. It was a great day of wandering through 'small town' India. Although riding on the road was a bit of an obstacle course, we had to maneuver around, people, goats, cows, pigs, rickshaws, motorcycles, cars, the list just goes on and on, but it was a great day of fun. Yesterday I left Hampi, leaving Kate and Lukas behind and headed for Mangalore en route to Varkala in the south.