Hampi: Man vs Nature

It’s easy to read so much about some places that you almost know them by the time you arrive, and the magic of their first impression is diluted or lost altogether.

I steered clear of reading too much about Hampi, or looking at pictures, knowing only what I had gleaned from the Lonely Planet: that the ruins and temples of an ancient city lay among a landscape littered with enormous boulders. I was more interested in the boulders than the temples; these giant stone balls that cover the landscape, but their size and number is overwhelming. And the reality is that they don’t litter the landscape - they are the landscape.

It might look as though these rocks are the result of some seismic catastrophe or volcanic eruption, but the granite terrain of Hampi is actually one of the most ancient and stable surfaces in the world. Three and a half billion years in the making, its unique boulder formations are the result of erosion. At first underground, by water, and then as the plateau uplifted over millions and millions of years, the rock was exposed and polished into its current shapes by the wind and Sun. It's tempting to call them other-worldly but that would be to completely misunderstand them, so inherently of this world are they.

The hills and ridges that line the horizon are an endless string of these stones. They lie clumped together, spread about as though dropped by birds, or balanced impossibly upon one another, as if by some wizard. It is easy to understand why primitive man took to using the notion of God to explain the world. Who else could have arranged them thus?

Where your eye isn’t drawn to these strange formations, their solid, smooth skin glistening pink and rusty in the baking sun, it is taken by the lush, stark greens of the palm trees, banana plantations and paddy fields that fill the gaps between them. It seems inconceivable that a landscape can look at once both so barren and so fertile. The boulders remind me of Southern Utah, where the red dusty terrain was so dry and inhospitable.

In the heart of this landscape are the little towns of Hampi Bazaar, and across the river, Virupapur Gaddi and Anegundi. Hampi is the modern name for Vijayanagara, a vast Hindu city that flourished from around the 14th century until 1565, when it succumbed to invasion by an alliance of Muslim sultanates and was razed to the ground. And that was the end of what was at the time probably the second largest city in the world – sacked, destroyed and emptied.

The little towns themselves are no longer empty. Hampi Bazaar is full of tuk-tuk drivers and guesthouse owners, though the tourists themselves are harder to spot. Over the river in VG, an international community of unwashed, dreadlocked travellers are in permanent residence. I feel pretty conspicuous in my GAP shorts and the plain t-shirt is doing nothing for my credibility. Nor is the fact that I don't take drugs, if the conversations I have overheard are anything to go by. And not just the conversations - the wild coughing fits of my three Israeli neighbours turned out to be the result of them smoking buckets at 8:30 in the morning before they checked out, and the guy sat opposite me as I type this may actually have passed out while smoking a joint (it's 10am), so long has it been since his eyes were open.

Though the towns are busy, the temples are not. Whereas in Angkor, Cambodia, the town has millions of tourists passing through each year and the best spots are crammed with punters, this place is practically deserted. It's a treat to wander among them like this, with only a handful of backpackers and locals for company. The last stop on my tour is the incredible Vittala Temple. If the others seemed empty, this one is definitely full - they're filming a movie and it is packed with cast, crew, extras and curious, friendly locals.

There is a wonderful synergy between the ruined buildings and their surroundings. In Japan, this is called shakkei, meaning borrowed landscape, where temples were designed to harness the contours of nature and incorporate them into their beauty, but it feels like the reverse has happened here. Man did his best but the stones are so huge, so overpowering, that they dwarf even his greatest efforts to outdo them.

I was reminded of how I felt in Nikko in Japan – a lush forest hiding countless temples, the glorious trees cut down to make way for stone monuments to the Gods. And so it is here in Hampi, where the unique landscape was mined to build a city, and the most intricate and remarkable temples were carved from raw and unsubtle rock. It’s strange to be here, marvelling at the things man has laboured over in the glory of god, when all around us true testimony to the wonders of the Earth, its creation and existence, lie abundant and undisturbed.

The other evening I climbed the six hundred steps up to Monkey temple on a hill that overlooks the valley. As always, I found myself walking towards the sunset, and again I thought of elsewhere in the world, of White Sands in New Mexico, where I watched an incredible sunset, tiny grains of gypsum sand running through my fingers. My hands reached down to touch the rock beneath me and I was struck most of all by its warmth, and how solid and intransient it seemed compared to those fragments of dust. So I laid my body out across the granite, in savasana, to feel as much of it in contact with me as possible. When I eventually opened my eyes and looked up, the old Sun was almost out of sight, growing larger, it seemed, as we inched away from it, and I thought that it takes being in a landscape like this, what we might call “other-worldly”, to realise just how completely fucking amazing the one we live on really is.

It's all about the Journey, not the Destination

A few of us were sat up the other night talking about India. Simon, who has been just about everywhere, proper travelling (the dreadlocks have gone thank God but he still occasionally wears the fisherman pants), was moaning about the logistics of buses and trains. A hitherto oddly silent South African guy (or was he silently odd?) suddenly and irrelevantly chipped in with the old "Yeah, but it's all about the journey, not the destination."

Bullshit.

We let him leave before we started ridiculing him, and took turns recounting our worst experiences, of which Simon's "Shitting into a carrier bag lying on the floor of a bus from Delhi" story was the clear winner. Travelling itself, that journey, yes, that's what it's all about - people, places, the experience. Riding unreliable and unsanitary buses and trains at stupid times of the night, over extreme distances, is an infernal pain in the arse endured solely on account of the destination they deliver you to.

Last night I finally got round to leaving Patnem, and took the 9:30pm bus from Cancona to Hampi. You do what you can to make these things bearable, so I went for the most expensive option: an air conditioned flat bed. 

No one seriously expects the bus to arrive on time, and it duly obliges, rocking up at the dusty old stand, after innumerable false dawns, shortly before 11. No big deal there, but what actually arrives looks like the sort of vehicle they used to export live calves in. Either that, or it has been modelled on the racks of cages you get in a pet shop, scaled up to house humans instead of gerbils.

I'm resigned to the discomfort of a sweaty, rocking bed for the sleepless night and make my way aboard, looking for berth 23. There are upper and lower bunks on either side of the gangway, with curtains pulled across by those already asleep. 23 is next to 24. Right next to it. As in, it's a double berth. A crucial piece of information they omitted to share when I booked, and that I would certainly have shelled out another 1,500 rupees to rectify.

The non-English speaking Japanese guy asleep in 24 wishes I had too. He is wearing either pyjamas or a martial arts suit, I can't be sure, and hugging several large bin bags that he has to awkwardly rearrange in order to accommodate me in my two foot wide share of what he thought was his bed. I smile and try to be friendly but he appears quite unsettled by all of this so I offer to take the window side, where I promptly wedge my feet up against the wall, cross my arms across my chest like a corpse, and inexplicably fall asleep.

When I wake up ten minutes later, I'm thinking about how this situation would have made me feel at various times in my life. Uncomfortable, awkward, threatened, resentful and angry, I think. But right now, I couldn't care less. I'm just lying there, smiling to myself, surrendering my fate to the universe, or more specifically, to the Indian system for allocating bus seats, and revelling in the lightness and absence of stress that comes from the abdication of control. And so I start to wonder if I don't secretly, masochistically, enjoy all the inconveniences that attend getting from one place to another

After a couple of hours we stop and I go for a piss (there's no toilet on the bus). Not keen to shit myself, I knock back a couple of Imodium too and climb back aboard. This is the last stop where new people might board and there's still a free bunk, into which I now debunk. When my Japanese friend realises I've moved, an expression of pure, unadulterated delight explodes across his little face.

The rest of the night is uneventful: intermittent sleep on a hard sofa that hasn't been upholstered (or cleaned) in the last hundred years while my head sweats on a "pillow" made of dentist's chair material. Halfway through the night I remember I bought a snickers and, in the ecstasy, devour it in one mouthful. It's daylight when we arrive, a few hours late, naturally, and the bus is greeted by a crowd of rickshaw drivers, baying for rupees. They mob us like rock stars as we alight, waving maps in our faces as if they want us to autograph them.

A friendly looking guy named Pampa takes me down to the river for the first boat of the day from Hampi Bazaar to Virupapur Gadde where I'm staying. Standing on the ghat waiting to climb aboard, I think back over the last twelve hours. A journey is just the price of getting to wherever you're going. Sometimes it rewards you beyond your wildest expectations and sometimes it (literally) rinses the life out of you. You can only hope that when you get there, it was worth it.

It was worth it

Later, out on the scooter, I passed the scene of an accident. A car had left the road and was crumpled against a tree. I don't know if anyone was hurt, or worse, but when I returned after my ride, the car had been covered with a sheet and they were preparing to tow it away. It occurred to me that the actual phrase is something like "Life is about the journey, not the destination," and at that moment it seemed the most obvious and pointless statement of all time. 

There is no Greater Love than the Love of Crab

The food in Goa has been outstanding. I’ve eaten impossibly fresh fish or seafood every day, and amazing Indian dishes knocked up by the chef at Bougainvillea where I stayed.

For sheer authenticity, the best place has to be Milly’s, a few kilometres out of town down the road to Agonda. A little house, a few tables held together with parcel tape and a veggie patch out the back. Cows lean over the wall from next door, and a dog and a cat sleep on the floor.

Milly prepares one meal a day, a thali. That’s some rice, pickles, dhal, sauce, and something else. I’ve had little fishcakes or spicy fillets of fish fried in semolina. She makes her own Kombucha, and everything has been grown in her little garden. Dining here is exactly the kind of experience that you travel for.

The other side of Patnem, a ride away down among the pine trees that line Turtle Beach, is Surya. It’s all fish and seafood - fantastic oysters, beautiful soup, and crabs from the lagoon behind the beach. You sit in dappled shade under the trees and watch the waves rolling in.

Surya, Turtle Beach

I chose a pretty big crab from the basket, its twin claws tied up with string. I love crab. Love it. I love the animals themselves, and I love eating them.

There is something very noble and dignified about a crab I think; they seem so ancient and primitive. I love how they change colour so dramatically when you cook them, and how that symbolises their passing from one thing into another. If you are going to eat animals, you really need to make this connection with them and understand what it is you are doing. You are asserting your place in the food chain; the natural supremacy of your species that is integral to the evolution of our planet. Kill and eat animals, but know and understand that you are doing it. Know that you have a duty to them during their life, and when you have taken that life, turned an animal into food, you have a duty to make that food taste as pure and delicious as it can.

I’ve cried eating crab before, and if I hadn’t been surrounded by people, I probably would have again. Just the sweetest, juiciest, most wonderful thing in the world to eat. I thank my little red shelled buddy, and pick slowly and deliberately through his body, making sure not a single scrap of him goes to waste.

I came back a few days later and ate another one. Walking along the beach after the meal, tiny baby crabs, their shells soft and translucent, are darting into little holes as you approach, out of reach of your heavy feet and the crows that chase them all day. Round towards the shore of the lagoon the sand became suddenly very soft and our feet sank inches deep with crisp, clean edges to their imprints. A strange pattern covered the surface, miniscule balls lying all around long, random scratches.

It was sort of comforting knowing that they were under our feet all the time, emerging only to scurry about the sand searching for their own little morsels to feed on, and I wondered how many of them would eventually find their way into the wicker baskets, and when, and make some lucky soul very, very happy.

Patnem: Paradise Found

Round about now I should be easing my stifled body from the flat bed of the overnight coach from Cancona to Hospet and unceremoniously unfolding my creaky limbs. But instead I am walking once more along the soft, homely sand of Patnem beach and limbering up for a spot of morning tennis. For the first time, but not the last, I’ve decided to extend my stay in a place I love.

Among the sadnesses to reconcile oneself with when travelling is having to leave places that you love, but to which you know you will never return. But it is part of the deep joy of travelling too – embracing the impermanence and transience of life, and rejoicing in things that make you happy while they last. To lose something you love, first you must have loved.

So maybe you stay a few extra nights, or weeks here and there to prolong one flirtation or another. Maybe not. But every now and then you go somewhere to which you know, beyond all doubt, you will return, and so it is with Patnem.

The greatest thing about life here is almost intangible. It’s not just a sense of community or warmth of spirit. It feels as though everyone is somehow unburdened by being here; lighter, happier and that the essence of the place fills them and makes them better people, more content. The gentle pulse of the tide is like a heartbeat, slow and strong, and in the same way that people walking together eventually step in time, so it is that everyone here seems to find harmony with that unique rhythm.

The civility of people can often be measured by their attitude towards animals. Resident dogs live on the beach, but to call them stray would be pushing it. They are extremely well fed and loved by everyone; basically communal pets. They reciprocate this love by loitering around the dinner table pulling sorrowful faces that their fat bellies belie, and by noisily fucking one another throughout the night (or in front of you while you eat - dinner and a show).

The sunsets here might not be the most spectacular (there aren't enough clouds) but they're a special moment nonetheless. The dogs join us humans and we head to the sand to watch the daily celestial wonder with a sort of reverence and gratitude, before spraying ourselves head to toe with mosquito repellant and slinking off to enjoy whatever the night time has to offer.

There are hundreds of huts along Patnem beach and beyond, all made of plywood, bamboo and covered in palm leaves. The cafes and bars are of similar construction, and for good reason. Because though for over half the year, the beach bathes in tranquil sun, come the end of May, the rains will arrive. 

My home for the last week or so

First the tourists will leave, and then the travellers. The Goans, who have businesses here, baton down their little shops and head inland to their houses. And then every single one of these huts and bars will be dismantled, piece by piece, the plumbing and electrics, the walls, beds and furniture packed away in storage, and the roofs of dried leaves burnt or left to wash away with the tide.

The baking heat of the summer sun will raise a great monsoon from the Arabian Sea, whipped ashore by a ferocious wind, and the empty beach, Paradise Lost, will sit and take what nature delivers; a penance for the high season of blissful, beachside days. And then, in November, like a colony of ants, the people will return, unpack the little world from the sheds and garages, and reassemble Babylon again on the seashore. The tourists and travellers will leave their homes all around the world and file back here to recreate and relive the happy times. The coin will flip over, the world will turn, again and again, year on year, new people, new beginnings, but the same, heavenly place.

The Blood of Jesus Protects, Saves, Heals, Restores

Wonderful though Patnem is, I can’t stay on the beach every day. Nor can I spend all day running, playing tennis, swimming, kayaking, doing cooking classes, yoga, finding secluded seafood shacks for life changing steamed crabs, discussing life and the universe around beach fires with wonderful people, or visiting the colonial mansions of new found friends.

Well, I can, but to do some of those things you need transport, and that means the two-wheeled variety. This being India, there is really only one way to do this:

But no. I might have driven a convertible Mustang and a Chevvy Camaro down the west coast of the USA, and a Nissan Skyline around Australia, but on two wheels, I’m a chicken, so I’m riding this bad boy instead:

In case you can’t see it clearly in the photo, the sticker on the front reads "The Blood of Jesus Protects, Saves, Heals, Restores.” So far, mercifully, it hasn’t had to, despite the best efforts of a number of adversaries one inherits when turning the key. These are:

1. Potholes
2. Tuk-tuks
3. Scooters
4. Cars
5. Everyone else
6. Cows
7. Dead dogs
8. Live dogs
9. Sleeping dogs
10. Monkeys
11. Everything else

Despite all that, the scooter gets you out into the countryside, and what glorious countryside it is. It opens up this little stretch of Goan coast, and you soon realise that it's not just Patnem that's special, it's everywhere around here.

Inland and the lush greenery and tropical forests open up, crystal clear waters hide delicious crabs and tiny roadside homes offer incredible food. It really does feel close to paradise.

Riding along in the late afternoon light, everything suffused with that special, golden glow of the disappearing sun, a moronic grin stretches across my bug splattered face. The rush of the wind, even at a measly 60kph and with Jesus rattling like a broken axial fan beneath me, is exhilarating enough to make me just feel deeply, deeply happy to be alive. Alive, and on the road: protected, saved, healed and restored. Just not by him....

Today on the scooter, heading out to turtle beach, a huge eagle swooped down in front of us and glided, six feet from the ground, ten yards in front of the bike, and for a few precious seconds, it were as though he were towing us along in his slipstream, before he rose up and soared over the mint green treetops and out of sight.