Hampi - The most beautiful place in India

Location: Bangalore
Country: India

Last time we left off, we were about to move from Arambol beach to Palolem beach in Goa.
It is true that Palolem is a beautiful beach and the sea there was lovely and clear.

The problem is that the beach has been ruined by Indian greed. Along the entire strip of beach, which is quite big (takes about half an hour to walk from one end to the other); there are guesthouses back to back. It is dreadfully over touristic there and the prices are high (relatively to India of course).
We didn't like it there much (learnt to appreciate Arambole...) and only stayed for 3 days.

While there I decided to live on the wild side and had a henna tattoo done on my back.

(Don't worry Pops, it's only henna drawn on, and it comes off after 2 weeks).

From Palolem we got a sleeper bus of about 10 hours to Hampi.
The trip was very close to being a nightmare. The road was very bad and we were being tossed around all the way. But worse than that, it was absolutely freezing. We had some warm things with us, but no where near enough; we were completely frozen by the end of it.

But as soon as we arrived in Hampi, all the hardship of the night was forgotten. It is the most amazing place I have ever seen, and is now officially my favorite place in India (so far).
All around there are huge rocks forming small hills. It is just unbelievable. I fell in love with the place as soon as I saw it.

Add to that the fact that we found a great guesthouse. There were huts spread out with grass and trees everywhere, it was like being on a kibbutz. The atmosphere in the guesthouse was also great, relaxed and friendly.

All around Hampi there are excavation sites of temples (you can see in the picture the advance excavation methods they use).

We spent one day on a rickshaw tour seeing all the different sites.
One day we went to a temple that is on a mountain and had the most spectacular view of the area. The down side being, that you have to climb up like 700 stairs to get there.
Paula had to stop in the middle because of her fear of heights. I went all the way to the top, despite the fact that I was very close to a major heart attack. But it was so worth it, it was an amazing site from up there.

But we actually spent most the time in Hampi just enjoying our kibbutz guesthouse and hanging out with some really great people we met there.


Now we are heading down south.
Got a night bus from Hampi to Bangalor last night. Bangalore is the hi-tech capital of India, but hasn't much interest to tourists. We just had the day to spend here, as we have a train leaving to Kuchin tonight.
We took a bus tour of the city thinking there may be some interesting things to see, but there weren't.
There are some areas here that are very western, which is weird to see. We went in to a couple of shopping malls, and you couldn't tell that we were still in India, all the big shop names, everyone in western cloths, fast food restaurants.

It has been a bit of a rough day, as didn't get too much sleep on the bus last night, and not sure how tonight will be, I'm hoping to sleep well on the train, I'm so tired, that I think I will.
Thankfully, once we reach Kuchin, the trips from place to place should be much shorter.