Tag: India

Went out for one more walk just after sunset. Packing is annoying.

I retreated pretty quickly from the vendors. It gets overwhelming after a while. I am on the roof one last time listening to the monkeys and the birds and the horns, and squeezing out the last drops of wifi before the ride to hospet. You may have noticed i sometimes spell it Hosapete. Both are correct, as many towns have been recently renamed. Bugs found me, ugh.

Across the street for a known entity for calories because of the upcoming train ride. Veg biryani (120) and a bottle of water (25) even though i had such a late lunch i am not really hungry. I’m sure I can find some food anywhere, but before i get stuck overnight on anything i want to solve any problems i can in advance.

Why is it knowing you overpaid for something and knowing by exactly how much you overpaid are different mental spaces?

Wifi says i have two bars but photo uploads are taking a while. Here’s hoping the wifi in the blr airbnb is better

I definitely can’t finish this food. Cashing out of here and the room and catching a ride. Posting this before i lose wifi. Here’s hoping i don’t spend all night writing for your entertainment and my sanity.

Went out for one more walk just after sunset. Packing is annoying.

I retreated pretty quickly from the vendors. It gets overwhelming after a while. I am on the roof one last time listening to the monkeys and the birds and the horns, and squeezing out the last drops of wifi before the ride to hospet. You may have noticed i sometimes spell it Hosapete. Both are correct, as many towns have been recently renamed. Bugs found me, ugh.

Across the street for a known entity for calories because of the upcoming train ride. Veg biryani (120) and a bottle of water (25) even though i had such a late lunch i am not really hungry. I’m sure I can find some food anywhere, but before i get stuck overnight on anything i want to solve any problems i can in advance.

Why is it knowing you overpaid for something and knowing by exactly how much you overpaid are different mental spaces?

Wifi says i have two bars but photo uploads are taking a while. Here’s hoping the wifi in the blr airbnb is better

I definitely can’t finish this food. Cashing out of here and the room and catching a ride. Posting this before i lose wifi. Here’s hoping i don’t spend all night writing for your entertainment and my sanity.

I booked an airbnb in blr for the whole week. It is right off 100 feet rd, by toit. I picked a higher-end place because work is paying for it and i need a little less self sufficiency while i am focused on getting my job done. I paid 61 usd per night plus fees and stuff, which seems absurdly expensive to me now. There were lots of places in the mid 30’s that looked nicer than where i am staying now, but i need less hassle, and i like the idea of being able to walk or take a very short tuk tuk back from dinner.

I rode the bike a little ways down the river and realized that the ferry is not bike capable. There are stairs to get down to the water.

I am now surrounded by a herd of goats, sitting under a ruin by the river. The goatherd whistles, clucks and brays at them to move them down into the grass again. He picks up a small stick or piece of grass and tosses it behind them to get them to move. They seem to follow his instructions pretty well.

This is one of the many ones that i am calling “working ruins” since although people don’t sleep here, they do live here. There are clay bowls and fresh rice on the ground. The family that ate here is likely one of those down in and around the river.

In case you ever end up in the early 1500s in vijayanagar , you probably can get a job as an elephant carver. They REALLY like elephants, and you would really only have to learn to carve that one thing.

Time to park the bike and take the ferry.

Turns out the ferry can take a single bike at a time, right on the nose, as long as everyone else sits at the back. I paid 50 since i didnt want to wait for the boat to fill up, but i probably got taken a little since the boat was already heading out.

The other side is way more hippie drum circle dirty european. I walked around some beautiful rice paddies, scaring off lanky birds along the way. I had my pick of three restaurants but the Goan Corner sounded familiar. It is of course stuffed with unshaven european 20 somethings trying to impress each other with alternately loudly swearing or agreeing with a yeeaaahhhh. Modern philosophers, i guess.

I ordered a cardamom lasse and alu achari, since i hadn’t seen achari on the menu here yet.

The lasse is super tart but good. I am trying not to drink it fast before the food shows up. This is probably a nice place to hang out, but the lack of breeze and the flies conspire to prompt my departure as soon as i eat. Maybe i can get a ride back.

Ok, that. Was. Amazing. Is it fair to call it my best meal in india, if i know i have a taste preference for it? Either way, i would need good food critic words that i don’t have so i will just say wow.

Food is definitely cheap here, even in touristy areas. The australians said no foreigners are allowed to buy property in india. This keeps the prices cheap. We can’t buy cars either, only rent everything.

270 for that meal

A shortcut through the rice paddy cut the return journey significantly.

I continued my trend of paying too much for other things, but i won’t say what they are because people will find out later. I don’thave the energy to argue over a couple of dollars, and these people need it more than i do.

Back to the room after the packed 10rs ride across the river, and an overheard conversation of a good price for a rickshaw to hospet (200). Cooling off, considering whether to go out again or just rest pack and shower.

Posting again, unedited

Since i went to bed early i woke up before sunrise and sat on the roof to watch the morning come. On the way up a big monkey was looming over two ladies who had already started breakfast. He was on the railing of the small steep metal stairs which finish the journey up to the roof. I waved my hat at him and he showed his teeth and lunged at me, but fortunately decided to walk away. I waited for him to climb down over the side of the building before i went up. Lesson learned : don’t threaten a monkey without a monkey stick. I rather enjoy having all parts of my face attached to the other parts.

I spent a little time trying to pick where to stay in bangalore. I need to figure something out at least for sunday night. It takes a long time to get around so the basic decision is whether to be near work or nightlife. I lean toward the latter.

Today i plan to take the bike across the river on the ferry and check out the village there. There are a couple of places on this side i haven’t seen yet including the biggest and closest temples. My train leaves Hosapet at 2130. It will take 20 or 30 mins to get there. I have this room booked for another night so i will be able to return here, clean up and pack before i go.

The local theater troupe came by again with another set of costumes. I was at ground level this time ao i took photos and video with the good camera. I gave 200 which is probably a lot for a 30 second performance but i like what they are doing.

Then the boys vending postcards and guidebooks came by again and i bought a book for another 200. The boys said they earn 15 as commission. All i had on me was a 2000 and i asked rocky to split it but he told the boys he would pay them later and he told me he would add it to my bill. That worked. I didn’t really want to buy anything heavy but it is pretty small.

Time to put on all remaining sunscreen and head out. My phone is super frustrating and my forearm is really sore but i am otherwise in good shape. I guess I strained a muscle pulling the moped onto its stand.

I switched my keyboard from swype to the default samsing one. I’m sure i will hate this differently.

Going to watch the sunset at the place where one does.

It was a short walk up a comfortably steep slope of something that cooled slowly, probably granite. If you have seen a mountain made a hill by a glacier it probably looked like this. The difference here is there are massive piles of glacial erratics everywhere. Huge stones stacked in unlikely ways by receding ice sheets. I am no geologist but it is hard to miss once you know how such things work.

Still, though i mean millions of stones. Perhaps maine looks like this under the soil and folieage, but there is virtually none of that here except the lush green verge of the river. Many civilizations rose and fell under the foreboding gaze of windswept peaks, but these are instead lumpy things, not proper mountains and so their barren peaks are uncommon at this lesser height. I certainly haven’t ever even seen photos like this elsewhere. Perhaps we will see something in thousands of years when the ice sheets retreat from Greenland, but it won’t be nearly so hot there.

I don’t know what the humidity is but is somewhere beween dust and talc on the “my mouth feels like i ate a handful of” scale that i just made up.

We have sort of staked out our respective temples, though i plan to move around. There is a “sunset point” that i crossed over, the high point of the natural granite, covered as expected with chain smoking Europeans.

Time to stop typing and look around more.

A family of monkeys thought i was ok and they joined me on the side of a temple. They didn’t seem to mind i wasn’t giving them anything. These definitely associate people with food and lack of aggression similarly. I don’t know if this is typical really as it was the first monkey family i met. From a couple feet away after she came to sit near me, I watched the mother pick apart grain from dried out plants and she didn’t ask anything of me. Perhaps she was hoping the look on her face would convey the desired “will you look at this? You try eating this. It’s nothing but dead grass you pasty food hoarder.” But her language skills aren’t there yet.

Later a gaggle of russians showed up with bananas but they were close to the other temple and i think that was someone else’s territory.

Monkeys purr quietly at each other in what seemed like a question and response or at least agreement of feeling. Some others deftly scaled a sheer rock face like it was nothing and started a brief ruckus with those already occupying the sliced-cave at the peak.

I am not sure i got much as far as photographs, but i wandered around and enjoyed the waning heat and the sun turning crimson as it dropped behind a pebbly hill miles away.

I dropped off my stuff at the room and swapped to my sandals, as a pair of new leather shoes sitting outside a restaurant is more than i want to trust. I kinda need them.

I’ve been thinking about what problems are fixable and whether i can do anything particularly useful. The cute Australian girls were selling water filters to villages, and a couple i met on the roof at breakfast was doing animal rescue. Both noble certainly, but not my wheelhouse. I have gotten into the habit of saying no to so many people who clearly need help. I took a picture today of an old man who lives outside the gated community of the ruins and town. He seems to own: a stick which holds him up in a permanent and severe crouch, a metal bucket, a wrap that serves as clothes for his groin, and a head wrap. He could’ve been one of the original temple builders for all i can tell, picking out his existence on who knows what.

I don’t have an answer.

Time for a shower then probably straight to bed. I asked for my moped to arrive early, following Rocky’s well tested three day travel plan and letting him handle the details. The moped is 500 for two days and petol is 100 here instead of 80.

Showered. Ok that was nice. The bed is pretty firm here but i am beat so expect to sleep well. I have ro keep remembering my room is just a few steps up from the tiny dirt road, but there is a restaurant above me across the street and i have windows.

My phone has been really acting up today. Evernote keeps closing out and reopening the note i am writing. It makes it hard to get anything done. I bet some unrelated update ran.

This room also has a nightlight and a fan that barely fits between the walls. Granted, that isn’t much. This is the cheap room here at $15/night internet price. That’s part of why i don’t mind letting him deal with things, it will still be cheap.

We leave our shoes by the main entrance, and Rocky’s little travel office has its own door of the stoop and just enough room for two visitors to stand. It houses his desk with paper record book and flat screen computer, a combination i found odd.

Also on paper was the mandatory log book of name, age, sex, passport and visa numbers and expirations. Oh and camera model which i assume is for theft reports. My visa has many fewer digits than most, since it is the rare 5 year business visa.

For dinner i went to Mango Tree, a place which has been around for decades, since before the site was identified by the UN and the residents cleared out. The old location was down by the river, probably under a mango tree. It is the best rated place so was full of europeans. I am not taking chances with food right now, but i did order their Mango Tree Special Fried Rice without asking what was in it. The answer is cashews, some kind of dried fruit, onions and green peppers. Probably other stuff but if you want a detailed description and recipe i am not your guy.

This keyboard is not as good at fixing typos but is better about autocorrecting into insanity. I need to figure out what broke though, this is my only real device right now and being interrupted every 2 min is frustrating.

I am pretty spent so this is probably my last update of the night.

I have to apologize in advance for today, as there are simply inadequate words to describe what it feels like to sit here in the shade under a very pointy desert thing, and feeling the breeze cool my back. I sit by an old path on a rock made exactly for this purpose, with chiseled divots every 6 inches. There are more irregular seats nearby for others to join and laugh and talk but today there is only the dry breeze and the birds. This spot between two huge glacial erratic boulders and a big hill made also of them channels the wind to make this such a perfect sitting place. I may not pass this way again but others will.

I don’t think I was even a little bit prepared for how I would feel here. The air is sucked from my lungs, I am not breathing it out. The scale of things makes me dizzy. I am trying to take a cell photo or two, but the real gems (I hope I hope I hope) are in my sd card. But, I saw pictures of this place before, and you will see mine and maybe say they are nice but the air will not be sucked from your lungs and you will breathe and your day will move on and you will not know what it is. Today is my day.

I sat under a big old tree by a rare stream. You may ask why there was a city in a desert but the river makes this clear. Still green things are mostly so only at the tips – sparse leaves, palms. This was a great bushy thing, whose name I will have to ask. Around it was configured a temple and a spot to leave footwear, which I did while I sat in the shade. Some flies were also in attendance at the temple so I did not stay overlong.

On ascent and taking a break (I do wonder what the altitude is here) an asian man was climbing behind me and I asked if he had seen the old tree. He seemed interested enough and descended.

Of course nearly all men here are asian but you know what I mean in that trying-not-to-be-racist American vernacular of “i feel bad that I can’t tell and maybe it’s a complicated question, and and and” But he had a nice camera and he looked like he wouldn’t want to miss the one old tree that doesn’t look like any others, hiding outside the wall behind a boulder the size of… What is even that big? A building I guess, but there are lots of buildings here and none look much like anything else really so the analogy breaks down. A really freaking big rock, OK? So big if it squashed your house no one would probably know because it would just be missing under the rock. Of course people lived under this rock (the side of it) befor they got kicked out for living in a monument. Something doesn’t seem right about that, but it would be a much trickier affair if it was all “excuse me but can I have a look in your loo? It seems quite old dunn’it?” (All polite people have british accents in my fictions of alternate present )

On an amazing overlook I spotted a shimmering green bird who dove downwards with spread triangular wings before flipping up into flight. It sat on a nearby branch and I got ready to capture its dive, but got impatient and looked away an instant too soon.

Onward and upward. I hope some enterprising local has more water…

Noooope. Lots of warning signs though, written clearly in the universal language of “you cross this white line you fall of cliff and die”. Fortunately I am literate in not-dying. So far. I definitely didn’t bring enough water into the desert though. That sign would be harder to translate but maybe they assumed the giant parched desert of rocks and dust would be a clue. Don’t worry though, there are park rangers around to take care of my dessicated corpse.

Ok couple snaps and I descend.

Oh, look another way down the mountain. Not closer though, I don’t think. Must resist urge to explore.

Actually kind of hard to walk in here at the pinnacle monument as people have stacked up many rocks in piles. I guess people’s urge to stack rocks is part of why that 12 storey temple exists down there so it’s hard to complain much, but it’s in my job description so I carry on.

Ok I got down, but went quickly through a bunch more places. I figured out how to get the timing close on the bird but finally gave up after 30 pictures of the same bush. Hint: set up the shot, then look with the other eye. I bet my photographer friends knew this already but one of you probably learned it with me today.

Walked back to Rocky’s, washed out my only piece of cotton (bandana/snot rag) and put it on my head under the fan. I am hungry but overheated and my arms and hands were burning. I need to deal with heat exhaustion before food. Was Maslow from India?

Posting this without editing because tired.

Checked into Rocky Guest House. Rocky is the son. Ramun is the boy (worker?). I already forgot the name of the father. All are super friendly.rocky’s father was born here. His English is ok in simple words, I want to talk to him more. Rocky seems much more cosmopolitan.

There are roof decks on many places in this little upscale tourist town. I say upscale because there are windows and ac. I am eating the Indian breakfast which is a spicy (oops) dosa with a fruit salad and two sauces I haven’t touched yet, plus a bottle of water and a coffee which is already gone. I want to clean up and go out, power through my tiredness an sleep just after sundown.

These are the kind of rooftops that great chase scenes are filmed on. This roof is cleanly swept and I walk barefoot having left my shoes at the door. The sloped ones are all corrugated metal and/or palm fronds.

Most indians here have a darker complexion, the same as I noticed in a few towns nearby. It is likely this phenotype goes back many generations, though I am not sure if there is any connection to the Vijayanagara people, or their conquerors or someone else. There was a roving musical play with painted and costumed performers that I enjoyed from the rooftop.

I checked in and Rocky planned my three days here. I am booked for three nights but I knew that going in. I leave after sunset so it will be nice to have the room.

I am lying down in the small room, similar to one in goa, which may be a mistake. I showered and my body feels like a deflated balloon. I need to keep moving if I am to see his planned sites for today. I will bring the camera and get wifi back in town. I could hit the temple with a rock from here so I am not worried about getting lost. Actually no,I don’t throw that well and anyway despite it also being made of rock they probably wouldn’t appreciate that. Maybe a lemon.

Off I go, posting now.