Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/6xXGvrTcELx5eQ7T8
So right after my SE Asia trip, I took a bus a few hours south from Chennai to Pondicherry to get certified for Scuba Diving, since I’ll be meeting my friend Arjun in Bali to dive at some point in March/April. I didn’t actually get to see the old French area of the city (Pondy was a French colony back in the day) since I spent all my time either getting dive certified, resting (diving is surprisingly tiring when you first start), or watching The Expanse, since season 4 had just come out on Amazon (it’s awesome!). But I did take a day trip there ~4 years ago and it’s a pretty cool area. A bit similar to Galle in Sri Lanka, but with the added hecticness of India. Diving is super addictive and incredible, nothing more to be said there. My instructor was this really cool white South African ex-chef, and he also gave me some tips on wreck dives in Bali since he was there for a few months earlier this year.
After Pondy, I spent 2 days at my grandma’s before heading to Bangalore since that was on the way to Hampi. I interned in ING in Bangalore the summer after my freshman year of college back in 2012, so this was my first time back since then. Basically spent the entire 3 days I was there shuttling from one part of the city to another to see various relatives and family friends, so it was really nice to catch up with everyone there. Saw my aunt and cousins who I stayed with when I worked in Bangalore (my paternal grandpa’s stepbrother’s grandson’s family, so technically my ~55 year old cousin and his two kids), and then stayed with my mom’s close childhood friend’s place for two nights. Her husband was actually the one who helped set up my ING internship back in the day, and this was my first time seeing them in 7 years. They also have a son my age who honestly, outside of myself, does the whole travel thing better than pretty much anyone I know. He has a job in Seattle (he was home in Bangalore for the holidays) that effectively gives him unlimited vacation time and lets him work remotely at his discretion, so he takes like 2 months worth of vacation a year. I would be jealous, but…
After that, I went to another cousin’s place (maternal grandma’s sister’s grandson), and he had a 3 year old daughter. It was honestly pretty jarring for them to refer to me as “uncle” when talking to her, and she would also call me that as well. Really drives my old age home. Also saw my grandma’s older sister (when translated to english, her nickname literally means “Tiny”…she’s like 4 foot 5, 90 years old and in amazing shape both physically and mentally. She’s a very remarkable person) and the rest of that side of that family, and on top of that got lunch separately with my aunt (mom’s brother’s wife) who lives in Tokyo right now but was visiting her parents in Bangalore. Bangalore was probably the busiest I’ve been in a looong time, with going around seeing everyone. But despite that it was really nice to catch up with everyone, and it continued the trend of all my relatives and family friends in this part of the world going above and beyond in being accommodating. I’m definitely very grateful for being extremely lucky to have this.
So after that, I went to Hampi for 3 days. My biggest take away from this is the incompetence of the Indian tourism board. If Hampi was in Thailand or Sri Lanka, you can bet your ass that it would (rightfully) be hyped up beyond belief, given that those two countries get, relatively speaking, a ton of tourism for not much history (especially compared to India and China). As it is, as someone who knows more about India travel than most people, I wasn’t even aware of this site until a few years ago, and that was only because of the video game Europa Universalis IV, where Vijayanagar is a playable “country”.
Hampi was awesome. Reminded me a ton of Luxor in Egypt, and it was, in the best and most sincere way possible, a poor man’s Angkor. Hampi was the 2nd largest city in the world in the 1500s but got sacked in an invasion and is now a sprawling, abandoned temple city complex. It was amazing to climb up boulders and hills and explore ruined temples…while the aspect of exploration here was better than Cambodia, Cambodia’s temples were certainly in a more ruined state, and the lush vegetation growing through the temples there is especially what gives it the trump card over Hampi for me. That said, I still obviously really loved it here. One of the highlights of my first day in Hampi was Matanga hill, which is a boulder strewn hill which I literally needed to climb (last time I actually climbed stuff was at Burning Man…). While not as cool as the views in Ladakh (or even Nepal or Sri Lanka), it was a pretty nice view up top there. I got to really appreciate the starkness of the landscape from up top – just tons of boulder strewn hills, with temples and monuments built on these slopes. I could also see green paddy fields to the south, which contrasted strongly with the harshness of the general landscape in the northern part of the ruined city.
It was just super fun to wander around and stumble upon random temples. It actually reminded me of Delhi, in that there are just 500 year old buildings lying about in every which direction, with very few of them even being labelled. It’s also kind of surreal to walk on a massive, flat, boulders where small shrines, temples, and complexes were erected on. A ton of these boulders also had carvings of deities, both on the ground and on makeshift walls. It’s also pretty legit to listen to the LOTR soundtrack (especially the elvish lament songs) while exploring here, or really in any ancient abandoned temple ruin. While it was no Cambodia in terms of sheer awesomeness (again largely due to the vegetation of Preah Khan and to a lesser extent Koh Ker) nor Khajuraho in terms of detail of the carvings, this was still definitely one of the highlights of my trip so far. I’d go as far as to say that this is probably my 2nd favorite ruin site after Cambodia, and over Egypt and Pompeii and Hadrian’s Villa. Still haven’t gotten bored of temples yet – like I did with forts in Rajasthan or gardens in Suzhou – so I am very excited for seeing some more in Tamil Nadu next month, not to mention Ajanta and Ellora in Jan/Feb, the temples near Yogakarta when I eventually make it to Indonesia, and even all the Buddhist stuff in Myanmar around New Year’s. Sadly won’t be making it to Mrauk U (which to me looks like one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen) while in Myanmar since that’s where the government is currently committing genocide against the Rohingya. Selfishly, I won’t be avoiding countries with human rights violations because at some point, basically every major place I’m interested in is guilty (India with hindu nationalism against Muslims, China with the Uygher camps, hell you can even argue the US, though obviously all 3 cases here pale in comparison to Myanmar).
At one point, I walked through a banana tree plantation for five minutes to get to the royal enclosure area, which felt a bit like the hobbits running through Farmer Maggot’s plantation. On my way back to the bazaar area, I ran into a group of American tourists who were about to turn back, and led them through the plantation as a new tour guide since it didn’t at all look like a path you could walk through. Another super cool thing was a few cases when I had the chance to walk through some pitch black passageways. I needed to use my flashlight on my phone to walk, and what would otherwise be “forgettable” stone carvings (since these carvings are everywhere!) became that much cooler when you see them in the pitch dark with a flashlight.
Really the only negative of Hampi was the Hampi bazaar area which I was staying in. The primary two lodging areas are Hampi bazaar or what is known as Hippie Island. The ferries to Hippie Island cut off at 5:30pm every day which was way to early, and if you got stranded on the Hampi side you would need to spend ~500 rupees to go all the way around to the nearest bridge to get back to your lodge. Also, I almost certainly would have disliked most of the people staying there…it’s basically the same type of crowd you see at Varanasi. Hampi bazaar is perfectly located, but there are no hostels, since all the available real estate was taken up by guesthouses before hostels were really a thing in India. Because of this, I had to pay the outrageous price of ~$30 per night for a mediocre room. But in all seriousness, the main negative here was that the area was super touristy (sort of like the tourist heart of Udaipur in many ways), so it was very tough to find good authentic local food, let alone cheap street food.
Random aside, and in the spirit of all those Spotify lists that everyone spammed Instagram with…figured I would also list the 20 most played songs on my phone since July (that was when I reset my phone’s music), since we’re heading to 2020(!). I usually go on shuffle 60% of the time but otherwise do actively pick out songs to queue and play, so this list was for the most part not surprising.
- Indian Summer – Jai Wolf
- Thunder Road – Bruuuuce
- Dreams and Nightmares Intro – Meek Mill (go birds)
- Shaking The Tree – Peter Gabriel
- Intro – M83
- Die Young – Ke$ha (……..in my defense, this is the song that reminds me of Burning Man the most since it was the first song played after I climbed up the cage in the Thunderdome my first night there)
- Animal Farm – The Kinks
- The Kids Are Alright – The Who
- Can’t Stand Me Now – The Libertines
- Tangled Up In Blue – Bob Dylan
- Band On The Run – Wings
- Fluorescent Adolescent – The Arctic Monkeys
- The Inner Light – The Beatles
- Rudie Can’t Fail – The Clash
- This is the One – The Stone Roses
- Second Hand News – Fleetwood Mac
- Tubthumping – Chumbawamba
- Beautiful Day – U2
- Andy’s Chest – Lou Reed
- Never Let You Go – Third Eye Blind
In terms of highlights of this year so far – I am already ~1/16 of the way through my retirement! – I would say Cambodia, Delhi and Agra, Ladakh, and now Hampi stand out the most. And the two best parts about retirement are losing track of the days (everyday is a Saturday!) and not having any “Sunday Scaries” at the end of any trip that I’m taking.
My mom and sister get in soon, and we’ll be going with my grandma to Myanmar for a little over a week to start the new year, before my sister heads out to Dublin for study abroad. She worked it out so that she only has classes from Monday to Wednesday, so I guess that’s further proof that we are related.