Hampi, the long forgotten kingdom
After a very nice train ride during the day where we could enjoy the landscape of south India passing by in front of we arrived in Hampi. As you can see from the pictures Hampi is set in the middle of the country side littered with boulders. It’s a very nice chilled out place where we wished we had more days to spend here. Upon our arrival we noticed that we were not the only ones we decided to spend New Years Eve in Hampi… It was really a bit of a joke to see that all foreigners were walking over the same small street past all the guesthouses to check out the same rooms which were left empty (for good reasons..). So when we were approached by one guy who had his guesthouse at the end of the village (and the road) and we decided to take him up on his offer for a ride over in his rickshaw… Thanks god we did that, as we found a very nice little guesthouse where the rooms were clean and cheap… by the time we were settled in and chilling in the hammock we saw people who had been walking in front of us entering in the guesthouse asking for rooms, but these were all taken…. 
In the evening we had a very nice stroll in the country side were India showed us it nice face again not just in terms of beauty of the country side but as well due to the fact that we met a farmer who was kind enough to have a chit chat with us and explain us the reason for the boulders (according to stories past down by the elders there was in the past a volcanic eruption which spread out all the boulders) as well as some explanation on his lands and crops. It might very silly but it was really a nice experience to have a chat with the farmer (who spoke excellent English) and get some insights into his way of life.
The next day was new years eve, to our horror we discovered that there was no big celebration in the whole of Hampi due to the fact that in the past these parties had caused some issues between western girls and drunken Hindu men (yes I know these infidel girls always..). This was also the reason why we saw in the evening a troop of about 30 police men being stationed in the village to ensure that there would be no trouble. Lucky we managed to find a bigger guesthouse were there would be a party in the evening and decided to go there. Very interesting evening as we spend it in a tipi (north American Indian tent) with a bunch of people who thought it was still 1960-70 (real old hippies and new ones), but still we had a nice evening there and enjoyed the massive fire they created to play drums around and dance.
After sleeping off our party of the day before we decided to visit the ruins of the former kingdom which were very nice. After which we took the train to Chennai for our last stop in the trip.
