I dip out of Goa on New Years Eve because otherwise I would never make it to Hampi due to the train bookings. My ticket for a seven hour ride to Hampi costs four dollars. My taxi fare to the train station, which is only an hour away, costs me twenty bucks. Go figure…
I arrive in Hampi around three p.m. Its weird man. The first thing that comes to mind is that boulder monster from Galaxy Quest (if you have ever seen that movie). There are thousands upon thousands of these surreal, cartoonish looking boulders that look like they were dropped from the sky upon one another. Some are scattered randomly and others look they were carefully balanced upon each other in the most absurd ways by Zeus or something…The formations look artificial in that way, as if I’m in a video game or fantasy world…Alice in Wonderland or Candyland…Land of the Lost maybe…Jurassic Park…Western pop culture references are my criteria for judging foreign countries it seems… However, the boulders are only the half of it. The landscape of Hampi is beautiful. There are banana tree forests and these brilliantly green rice paddies that are flooded with water so that the entire bizarre landscape is reflected in them. Grass and straw huts surround the fields while villagers, water buffalo, cows, goats, and chickens dabble around. This is the best place I have been to in India by far without question. If you go to India you must go to Hampi. If you have been to India it’s worth making the trip back just to see this single place, really.
A river separates Hampi from Virupapur. I’m staying in Virupapur since its less touristy and its what Goa used to be like before it became popular. You have to take a boat to get over to the otherside. Its pretty undeveloped in that respect. Theres a bridge but its collapsed. The second closest bridge is half an hour away or so. Lots of dreadlocks, chillum smoking, hammocks, and cafes where you sit on floor cushions with knee high tables where you can overlook the temple ruins, boulder mountains, and river flow.
I checked in, ate food, and went out for a walk. A hippie with dreads down to his waist invites me to a drum circle at one the guesthouses up the road. I realize I had forgotten its New Years Eve at this point…Holidays don’t seem to matter too much to me while I’m over here…What the hell, I have nothing better to do…I take a walk, observe the town/village, climb a hill and watch the sunset. The sunset in India, wherever you are (except Varanasi) is amazing. Even in smog covered Delhi.
Sidenote: My guesthouse room smells like raw sewage right now because I have an Asian toilet that doesn’t flush. Thought I’d add some atmosphere to this…
I head to an internet café to check my mail. I go to hand my money for computer usage to the middle aged Indian man running the place and he tells me to just put in on his desk since his hands are busy with rolling a fat joint.
I walk across the street and head to this hippie looking guesthouse that has an open air, ground level gazebo type restaurant with all types of weirdos, travelers, and odd sorts relaxing, reading eating, drinking, smoking joints and cigarettes while listening to jam band music pouring in from the large speakers. There is tiny strobe light that projects red and green orbs across the roof. A few people are sitting in hammocks, some are lying fully out on the ground cushions, one dude is even taking a ride on a tree swing. Candles burn.
The place starts to really fill up as the night grows on. People begin to bust out drums, guitars, and didgeridoos and jam together. A long white haired hippie without a shirt or shoes but with a big “Om” tattoo in Hindi script and some other designs on his right shoulder sits down next to me. I overhear him say he’s from Amsterdam and that he has grandkids. He’s a local here and there seems to be something of a community in Hampi since a lot of the people here know one another well.
He breaks out a chillum and some weed from Amsterdam and passes it around while a bonfire several yards away begins to grow.
After an hour or so we all migrate over to join the others at the bonfire and a group session of the Rolling Stone’s, “Sympathy for the Devil” breaks out between the forty-five or so of us. Everyone is laughing, singing, dancing, drinking and smoking. The old aged hippie breaks out a flute and begins to play with the others as he does a little jig to go with it. The clock strikes twelve and local fireworks illuminate the night sky and the hyper surreal rock formations around us while everyone cheers.
For a moment, looking out over the fire, I thought to myself, “This is it, like holy shit, I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world ever again. This place is perfect.”
Now, that’s what I saw. And truthfully, that was a thought I had. Of course, what I felt was different, very different.
The reality of the situation never needed to set in because it exists like a gun against your head 24/7. If you can picture that, it would make it really hard to concentrate. I’m living in a fantasy world. I spend my days wandering amongst hippie dropouts, half-naked Hindu priests, shoeless villagers herding water buffalo, all set behind some psychedelic moonscape desert/jungle/mountain hybrid with ancient ruins--which I’m free to cruise through on a motorbike for three dollars a day. There are no rules and the whole system is awesomely unstable. You never know what’s going to happen next. People use that phrase as a cliché but its true here.
“What am I doing tomorrow? Shit, dude, I don’t know what’s going to happen in three minutes let alone twenty four hours.”
There is no one hear to tell me where to go, how to be, what to do, or really anything—so long as I pay the seven dollar a day room charge. However, despite the externally blessed freedom, I’m unfortunately still me I’ve found.
It’s just something simple about acceptance and patience. Two things I have yet to fully master. Its never going to be the end of the world but it always seems like that. Or at least the unconscious suggests it, throwing the whole thing off balance. I think its probably trying to tell me something and I just don’t want to listen.
The sun rises. I rent a motorbike and head onto the weaving open roads through the massive post-apocalyptic boulders. I just go. No direction needed. I have no clue where I’m headed. I’ve noticed riding motorbikes gets you into the moment and things that were previously there just drift away—mix my ipod in and its transcendental. Dodge the cows. Swerve past the water buffalo. Almost get run over by a tractor. Slam in the pot holes. Feel the sweltering heat of the roadside banana tree jungles. Taste the dryness of the desert. Wave to the village kids—occasionally screaming at them. I almost run over a chicken, dog, and a goat in the village.
At times its like being in the middle of nowhere…Which, I find to be the coolest feeling on Earth. I went crawling through this ancient cave which serves as a worshipping ground for the Hindu deity Genesha, the large elephant-headed man who rides a rat, and it was like being in another world or something. Dead silent. No one around. Empty and pure. The middle of nowhere reveals everything and that makes it the best place on Earth. I’ve also noticed there to be lots of “middle of nowheres”…You can find them almost…anywhere…strangely enough…Freshman year of college I came back to Denison University early after November break and there was no one there but me, snow was falling and right then and there, it was the middle of nowhere and it was fucking cool.
The middle of nowhere is non-local, you see…You can just go somewhere that’s empty and have it be the middle of nowhere. This doesn’t always work…But when you do get there, you realize it and its like the coolest thing on Earth…I don’t wanna be anywhere but the middle of nowhere…Anything else is boring and a waste of time.
You ever go outside and to your surprise its heavily pouring down snow but its dead silent? Yeah, that’s what being in the middle of nowhere is like. Its so fucking loud and powerful that’s is deafeningly silent. Its like so much is happening that nothing is happening. Its riddled with paradox but it doesn’t make your head spin, it just makes perfect sense. Your aren’t looking at it with your mind. Your just present with it all and its…yeah…
BUT, whenever I find myself in the middle of nowhere I (eventually) always try to be in it and get in it and that’s right when it stops being the middle of nowhere and starts being just some other place that lacks sensory gratification…time to move on…what was it I needed…I continue to miss the obvious…carry on…
The road fluctuates from open aired freedom to sudden stop in poverty stricken villages. I feel like I’m in Arizona, West Virginia, the badlands, then California, then Shenandoah national park, then like…where the fuck am I? What the hell is this place? These rocks man, what the hell are they doing here?! Haha this place is a trip….too much…is this shit real? Probably not…
I ride out of the rolling mountains of boulders and realizing that I’m just going into typical Indian towns I begin to head back. Half-way back from where I first began I see a dirt path and start to turn down it. However, an elderly village woman of about 70 years of age in a purple sarai resting near the path stops me. She speaks some words in a language I can’t understand.
Through body language, though, she motions to me that she wants to go that way and needs a ride. Eh, what the fuck? Hop on! So this elderly woman climbs on the back of my motorbike and sits like she’s a woman riding a horse in the 1920s or something. You know, like she has both her feet swung over to one side and is sitting perpendicular to me. You see this a lot here but its funny when someone is doing it with you. What I assume is her grandson who must be about three years old (not even 4 feet tall) sits in front of me and holds onto the steel bars below the rubber handles of the bike like he’s ridding a chopper or something.
I quickly realize that shit. I’m responsible for not only my life now but also theirs…I’m driving on a shit road, filled with pot holes, other motor bikes, and up in the distance there seems to be a herd of water buffalo covering the whole road…great…maybe now isn’t the best time to mention to the woman this is my first time driving a motorbike…I hope she trusts me not to kill her child grandson…I hope I trust me.
We survive.
I’m sort of stressed out. I’m happy to finally let them off after a few kilometers. But it was weird man. I had my ipod blasting dubstep and hiphop as I’m driving a motorbike through one of the most insane landscapes on Earth, dodging large hoofed animals, while a 70 year old Indian village woman and her three year old grandson straddle me. Does this make sense to you? I, personally, don’t really get it.
I remember thinking to myself as the three of us, incapable of communicating, zipped over bridges, through a jungle, past cartoonish mountains, waved to villagers, and avoided the perpetual danger of road hazards, “ this is probably the weirdest moment of my life…”
Sort of like the Twilight Zone with a happy ending for a change.
I check out a few sites, climb some boulders here and there—go caving through one area underneath the boulders, which was really cool…I then head to the monkey temple for the sunset. The climb leaves me exhausted but the view is beyond words. So I took photos so I don’t have to talk to about it. A lot of people hate on facebook—or at least this seems to be the popular thing to do…even with people who have them…I think this has to do with the idea that we shouldn’t be so superficially concerned with the projected social appearance of others and be above that…I’ve noticed a lot of people use the term “facebook stalking” for looking at other people’s pictures and shit. Dude, I don’t get this. Its not stalking if you publically post shit on the internet and I look at it. And on another note, I look at everyone’s stuff. Shit, I even look up the people who I only had gym class with when I was in second grade…personally I love facebook and I thoroughly enjoy the superficiality of it…Does this make me shallow? Lets hope so. Honesty prevails. I’m just talking about facebook because I posted pictures there and I don’t see a reason in uploading them both to my blog and facebook since the internet connect here blows.
These two Indian dudes at the monkey temple ask for my photo…okay…However, I start talking to them and actually find myself enjoying the conversation. They’re smart guys and we talk a good amount as an epic sunset takes over the moment. You could be blind and the view would still blow you away.
I have no problem with Indian people. I’ve made quite a few genuine Indian friends. However, I have a problem with Indian people who look at me as some foreign toy for them to play with so they can later tell their friends about it. Then again, maybe I’m using India in this way…I don’t really know...But its annoying to have all 1.2 billion people waiting in line to have a picture with me.
We head down and they buy me a coconut and I decide to have dinner with them. They were educated and knew a lot but it was funny because the one guy who I talked more to didn’t know that America was once a British colony…I had to explain to him the American revolution and such…What made it so funny was the dude was by no means ignorant or anything…He was going for post-graduate school and everything…His sister even studied in America for two years…But I mean, how much do you know about Indian history? So I guess think of it like that…
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