No room on the bus

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Our train arrived in Hospete and we were hit by the heat as we left the station.  We walked the couple of kilometres to the bus station to find the bus to Hampi.


What a shock we received.  It seemed everyone was going to Hampi! The bus on the stand was jam packed, with people hanging out the doors.  We were obviously not getting on this one.   We watched in awe as a family of about 6 managed to squeeze themselves inside, followed by a few more people.  It was like a Mary Poppins bag, or Tardis.  We could not work out how they got on or where they went!

Another couple of buses arrived but there were just too many people scrambling to get on.  We decided to leave the bus station and negotiate an auto.  We found one quickly and agreed a price and were on our way.

We arrived in Hampi, along with everyone else!!  It seems there is a religious festival today and everyone has come to the famous Virupaksha Temple.


We walked to our accommodation and checked in.  We rested a for a bit and then went in search of food.  There wasn't much to be found.  We could not see any cafes or restaurants just a few street sellers.  We settled on some lemon rice, followed by chai.

We then wandered past the Virupaksha Temple, where hoards of people were headed and decided to give that a miss for now.  Instead we headed to the river, which was quieter and had lovely views of the temple and over to 'Hippie Island'.

We followed the road round, stopping for some steamed peanuts on the way.  The moment we sat down we were required for selfies!  After about the 4th group wanting selfies we decided sitting still was maybe not such a good idea and continued on our walk.  

A family of mum, dad and 2 little girls stopped on a motorbike to say hello.  They were here on holiday.  We walked a little further and then turned back.  We came across the same family again and stopped to chat.  The parents wanted the eldest girl to practice her English.  They told us she had been having online lessons for 2 years and wanted to know how her English was - it was very good and they were very proud to hear this.  The obligatory selfies taken, we continued back to our accommodation 


Around 8pm we decided to head out to try and find some dinner.  As we were leaving our accommodation a man sitting by the gate told us to ensure we were back by 9.30pm as he would be locking up!

We managed to find a lady making masala dosa, which was one of our favourites when we were last in southern India.  On the way back we called into the temple to find that many people were camped out in there for the night.  We then stopped for some chai and headed back to meet our curfew!

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