OK OK, time for more of me again ...

(well, us actually ... but who's counting?)

When we left you last time, I believe we were on our way to Hampi (or Himpi, as most of the beardy travellers pronounce it, being antipodean, or some such.) Hampi is, actually a fascinating place, but all this is for nought 'cause it's DRY. That's right, no bloody beer. We were there for 4 bloody days without as much as a sniff of lager and, aside from a couple of brief spells on anti-biotics, I'm fairly sure that neither Andrea nor I have ever spent 4 days off the beer since we met. I wasn't even going to tell you, as Dave may actually disown me for spending nearly 100 hours sober, but there you have it. Suffice to say that we are currently very "cheap drunks" as Andrea very classily put it and are working on improving our tolerance again.

Hampi, itself is an ancient city, capital of the region some interminable time ago, which has since fallen to ruin and now serves only as a tourist destination (some tourist destination - no beer AND all the restaurants are vegetarian) All the buildings in town are built from the local granite (except for the guesthouses, of course, which are rotten concrete) and there are TONS of old temples and market streets (now a bit thin on the old goods front) and such stuff. Granite is SO available here that the locals quarry it BY HAND and cut it down into 6" square stakes to use as fence posts. Really. The ruins are slowly being rebuilt, in much the same way as they were built originally, by the look of it. i.e. by hand. Our guide told us that work only goes on for about 6 months of the year as there's not enough money to pay the salaries of the stone masons (who are all from the local area and so cost about 2 pound 50 per month, probably.) We reminded him, however, that now they're charging all the foreigners 10 US$ to get into the main temples, they should have loads of money to do a bang up job on the renovations. Our guide seemed less than convinced and said "Delhi" in a somewhat subdued tone ... Watching the renovation works going ahead was actually quite interesting (for me, anyway) and reminded me of digging holes in the US embassy in Beijing using 60 men (instead of 1 digger) which took me back, I can tell you.

It is fairly obvious to the untrained (and sober) eye that some of the temples have been helped along somewhat in their "ruining" whereas others have been left suspiciously unscathed. Our guide explained that this is because (at some interminable time in the past) when the Muslims came bounding over the hill and were marauding their way through South India, they struck a deal with the Shiva followers (one sect of the Hindu faith) that the Shivanites (or whatever they call themselves) would help the Muslims to invade and destroy all of the Vishnu temples (another Hindu sect) so long as the Muslims left the Shiva temples alone. Isn't religion marvellous? So there you have it, all the Vishnu temples smashed to shit and the Shiva temples still in operation today. Bit of a downer if you're a Vishnu acolyte in Hampi, then. We did learn one other interesting snippet as well, that is why is the cow sacred in India. It turns out that Shiva's preferred steed was a bull (obviously no mercs available in them days) and so, anticlimax that it is, that's why The Sacred Cow. Plus I'm pretty sure that it pisses off the Muslims, who have been known to enjoy a steak or two ... It turns out, in fact, that all the Hindu deities have a preferred animal that they used to get around on. Vishnu, for example used an eagle (that'll be why we don't eat eagles, then) known as Garuda (although I'm pretty sure that Vishnu's steed had a better air safety record than Indonesia's national carrier, of the same name...) Far more interesting than Vishnu, however, is Ganesh, the elephant deity of wisdom. And what did Ganesh ride around on might you ask? A Rat. Eating jokes aside (and anyone who's read any Terry Prachett will know that some people will happily pay 7p for rat on a stick, with ketchup) it's proof of humour in religion that the fattest god should be riding the rat.

After Hampi, we headed to Jog falls, the tallest waterfall in India (at about 250 metres.) The LP-BTGWOBTA doesn't give a glowing report of the place, which is probably why no-one goes there. They say the falls are somewhat less impressive now that the top has been dammed and a hydro plant by-passes the falls. Well, it would be a bit shit, really wouldn't it, if there was no WATER. We checked around, though and were assured that, yes, there is water at Jog falls, especially at weekends, when they "turn the falls on" (one assumes by turning the hydro-generator off.) We figured that seeing a 250m high water fall "switched" on and off would be too good to miss so we hot footed it up there ... to find that the one hotel that is still open, doesn't have a bastard alcohol license. We bribed someone (a lot) to get on their motorbike and go to the next town and return to us bearing brown booze. We paid through the nose (almost 1 pound 20 a bottle!) but that was OK cause we were drinking through the mouth and so the beer only had to contend with the smoking for time at the gob. The falls are quite impressive, although we didn't see them being switched on and off (my engineering memory did at one point kick in to remind me - politely through my glorious hangover - that valves as big as the ones probably in use on the Jog falls hydro project don't just shut off like a tap and also provided me with a disturbing recollection of calculating surge tower heights at Poly - a horror that will mean nothing to anyone who hasn't actually had to do it ...) however the "resort" is obviously somewhat neglected at the moment, probably in part because the or LP-BTGWOBTA doesn't really give you any reason to go there (oh yes, they do say that the bus ride to the falls is hair raising in the extreme - 100% accurate there.)

From Jog (or Dodge - as in "we've got to get out of Jog" as we began calling it) we headed down the hill to Hassan, which has a couple of temples in the vicinity (and where we drank beer non-stop for 2 days in front of the cartoon channel - thank god for satellite telly) and then to Madikeri, which is a "hill station" where we are now, preparing to head off on a daring hike tomorrow daring in that I don't think we're going to get a beer or any meat for a couple of days, I begin to see why so many beardy types spend all their time in Goa...

So long for now and write back you lazy b'stards... 'cause I'm interested in what you're all up to (no ... I am ... really...)

Cheers

James