Hampi

We arrived in the dark at 5.00am in a small town named Hacet where we needed to catch a tuk tuk the 14 km to our destination of Hampi. We were lucky as Pashandar a tuk tuk driver was waiting for us (well anyone really we just happened to be the first set of tourist that he meet up with). We stopped first got a coffee with him at a small kiosk on the street, then he drove us to Hampi. We didn’t have any accommodation booked in Hampi but Pashandar knew everywhere and took us to a nice, cheap guesthouse where we checked in and had a quick snooze. Then off for a walk to the river to see the men fishing with nets and the ladies doing their laundry. The river was really pretty and surprisingly quite clean and made much more interesting with the large number of carvings on the boulders and different statues in the river. Apparently many years ago, Hampi used to be the most sacred city before Varanasi and all these carvings and statues by the river are left over from those days. We visited some of the temples in the nearby area including the Elephant Temple but we were confused by the name as we didn’t see any Ganeshes or elephant statues. Later on we went back to the Elephant Temple as we had heard there was supposed to be an elephant living in there. This time we found her! Lakshmi - The Temple Elephant and she was so so cute. We stood watching her for a while and were amazed to see that when the locals gave her a 1 rupee coin, she gave them a blessing by putting her trunk on their heads. So Jody gave her some money and Lakshmi.... just ignored her! A little boy next to her gave Lakshmi some money and she blessed him! Jody was shocked so she tried again. Same result and same result for another group of white people too. Could it be that Lakshmi was racist??? The sun was going down so we climbed the hill behind the temple and watched the sun go down, before heading back to the guesthouse where we snuck up onto the roof to drink our wine in the moonlight. The next morning we had hired Pashandar and his Tuk tuk for the day, as there were so so many temples to see. It’s how you imagine it is like being in Greece. but don’t worry, we are not going to go on about them - we are sure you don’t really want to hear about all the temples? We will say though, that we bumped into two lovely ladies from Sheffield - Carole & Sue. Two sisters who were retired school teachers who travel a lot together. They were such good fun we could have chatted to them all day. Wherever you are now Sue & Carole, we are sure you are still giggling! Thilak Homestay Room rating: 7/10 - small but clean & comfy. Nice bathroom Location: 10/10 - right in the centre Staff: 7/10 - Nice Value for Money: 8/10 - Other comments: There were plenty of good restaurants all around us Stay again? Yes if in Hampi Overall area experience: 9/10 - this is a lovely small town with a great atmosphere and brilliant if you love temples! Probably one of our favourite places in India we have been.