A Wobble From India

Hampi Days

The internet connection is very slow here, so slow that it would take too long for me to load and read my last post, so there is going to be a bit of overlap. Time is limited, so this is going to be a fairly clinical recounting of events....

I spent three weeks in Hampi. I got sick at the beginning, and my body was slow to recover, taking around 9 days before I felt close to normal. But since then I have only been off-colour for one morning, which is a very good run (pun not intended) by Indian standards. Maybe my guts are developing a bit of immunity. Famous last words.

Most days in Hampi involved more than one of, but not necesarily all of, the following activites : climbing, or bouldering to be exact; swimming in the lake; eating lots of good food; exploring ruins and temples; and hammock time.

The climbing was a big hilight. I made good friends with some very good climbers, and learnt a lot. On my last day in Hampi I went climbing with Tom, another beginner climber, and we had lots of fun climbing lots of problems (climber talk for things to climb) that had been impossible when I started. Climbing on the granite was very tiring, both for the muscles, and for the skin on our fingers. In fact, people's fingers were the limiting factor for all of the climbers. My hands look like a bit of a mess right now.

Some Personalities

The other main hilight was the people I met; the majority of them were Poms. There were Joey and Saska from Brighton. Joey was a very funny guy, who works as a photographer for car magazines and car advertisments; he had lots of great tracking-and-panning shots of rickshaws. His first words of the morning were usually something like "spliff?". Saska seemed to be a calming influence, and we were all very glad for that.

Andy was from Liverpool, and is one inch short of a Peter Crouch (around 6 foot 5 for people who don't know how long a Peter Crouch is). Another big personality, but a complete woose who had to be encouraged, teased and threatened for ages before he would jump off the big rock at the lake ("c'mon Andy, it is only 2 Crouches and an Owen high"). He was always up for a big night, which we thankfully managed to avoid. He is also a fan of a certain football club, and one of his uncles has seven season tickets... and I have been invited to a game. But I like Andy for who he is, of course.

There were lots of Spaniards, so now I have plenty of spots to stay in Spain, and people who are very keen to show me their fave climbing spots/beaches/cities in Spain. These people's invitations will be taken up.

On The Road

After three weeks in Hampi I got the feeling that it was time to move on.... to somewhere else. I hit the road with another of the Hampi personalities, Tom from London. Tom is remarkable, because he is so similar to me. We share the same opinions on most of the important things (life, spirituality, curry, football, the exemption of mosquitos from nonviolence), the same sayings, and so on.

Change of Plans

We headed East to Hubli, where he was going to head South and I North. When we got to Hubli and went to book train tickets at the station, there were no seats available at any cost for the next 8 days. Neither of us felt like making long bus journeys to our respective destinations, so we made a group decision to "fuck it, split the difference, and go to the beach instead".

We got a hotel room with satelite TV, so that we could watch the Saturday football games live from England, then got a relatively short and simple four-hour bus ride West to Gokarna the next morning. That was a couple of days ago. We have a cheap hut on Om Beach. Om has the usual ingredients for an Indian beach : sand, puny waves, slightly murky water, Westerners in very small bikinis, day tripping Indian men who come to openly ogle the bikini girls, drum sellers, pushy cows, ratty dogs, lots of dharbas selling hilarious interpretations of Western food (American chop-suey springs to mind), and a big rock where the locals can be spotted going to shit in the sea (maybe it isn't the food that makes people sick on the beach).

I have been getting back into my practice, and have been pleasantly surprised by how good it is (mentally that is, my left leg is still buggered and will take quite a while to heal I think). I have been practicing on the beach, with the sun rising in front of me. A couple of other people who practice Astanga approached me after the first day and now we all practice together. Nice.

So now I am in another of these "backpacker hangouts" for a little while. I have booked a train ticket north on the 7th, so until then I will probably stay here. These places are fairly insulated from the "real India" (which is some vague place which is always somewhere else, but you should be experiencing, you know what I mean, man?). When I leave I will be heading to Madhya Pradesh, which is a much less developed state, where I will move around until it is time to head to Europe.

I don't have much in the way of plans for Europe, just a list of things I would like to do. The main problem will be getting work, as countries like making it hard to get work visas once you are on the road. At least India has been cheaper than I expected, and money will not be too big of an issue for me to worry about when I first get to London.

I have a bag full of funny little stories, and Ben-centric observations, but I don't get to the internet nearly often enough when I am not in the cities... so you will have to put up with the linear "how Ben got from A to C" narrative. And I am not planning to be anywhere with decent internet for a while, so rest easy knowing that Ben is well, doing an OK job of keeping out of harm's way, and learning to get along better with the locals.

Wobbling Along

Speaking of getting along with the locals, I have made some significant progress of late. In a word, wobbling. I have learnt the head wobble, and have developed some skill at deploying it. A smile and a wobble makes everybody your friend. Often one finds oneself in a situation where you are going to get harrased if you say anything, but you feel awkward about stonewalling the person who is trying to get your attention... in such cases just wobble. When the hundredth school child asks you for a school pen, just wobble. When the rickshaw driver demands a wholly undeserved tip, just wobble and walk away. When the wrong meal is bought out to you by the waiter who refused to write down your order, insisting that he could remember it, just wobble and eat what you got.

So, with a wobble I finish this post. I hope that all is well with everyone.