Monkey and Monkey Temple

I have been meaning to write about my trip to Hampi. It took a plane, train, and bus, about 14 hours of traveling, to get there. I was hesitant about going at first, because I had never heard of it and had other places I wanted to see, like Kerala and the Golden Triangle, but my friend wanted to go and I'm glad we did. It was so beautiful with all its ancient ruins and stunning scenery. I think the pictures are better than any story I can tell so I'll just say we spent two nights there. One day we toured the ruins and the next we crossed the river and climbed 600 steps to visit the temple on the top of a hill. Hampi is definitely a highlight of India for me.

Real Korean writing, and the good penmanship indicates it was written by Koreans. I mean unless you read Korean you wouldn't know it says "Korean Restaurant" and lists tasty Korean dishes. Excited, we checked it out and it had some Korean food on the menu but wasn't authentic.

Virupaksha temple.

Greedy monkey inside the temple that SPRINTED at my friend who wisely and quickly threw the bananas on the ground.

Tungabhadra River.

Other side of the river.

Everything had engravings, even the rocks in the river.

Big Ganesha among the ruins.

Old city ruins.

Engraving on Vittala Temple.

More engravings.

On my 5km bike ride from the river to the Monkey Temple on Anjenaya Hill.

The 600 steps to the top of the hill, the Monkey Temple is that white building at the top.

After 600 steps, the view is worth it! Also, there were grubby monkeys everywhere.

Different view from the Monkey Temple.

Viva La Singapore, Mumbai Edition

Back in Mumbai, we had another extravagant weekend of food and drink, but this time in Mumbai. And yes this included going out in Mumbai, which I never thought I would do but turned out to be a lot of fun! So after my most exciting ride on the train to date, I arrived at the very nice Ramada on Juhu Beach. This was quite the departure from my more simple life as an NGO worker. After getting ready we hit up Rock Bottom, though the name was a little intimidating, it was nice and really happenin. I saw lots of young Indian people drinking and wearing western clothes, something that was a shock to my new conservative sensibilities. My favorite part of the night was probably the DJ. I have been itching to hear and dance to American pop music for months now, and that’s what I got! It was great. So at about 1AM the club shut down, but there was an after-party upstairs! Wow! So after some more dancing, we were exhausted and collapsed in our nice Ramada hotel room.

The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed to make it to the breakfast buffet. Which was delicious of course. Then onto Juhu Beach. After making the rounds on the beach, and getting some coconut water, we decided to head down to the Fort area. From there we had our first extravagant meal. And it was amazing. Peppered fish and squid, so good.

Lots of people hanging out at Juhu Beach.

$35 meal in Mumbai! But so, so good.

From there we wandered to Colaba and through the Taj Mahal hotel and eventually found ourselves at Leopold’s. Turns out Leopold’s has a second-story bar I never knew about. Tons of expats of course. Then we called it a night.

The next morning was delicious vegetarian thalis. Then we did some actual Mumbai stuff and saw dhobi ghat. After a nice stroll through Chor Bazaar, where we discovered a new sect of Islam, we decided it was too hot and sunny to stay outside and went to the Intercontinental on Marine Drive. The rooftop bar had beautiful views. After watching the sunset we headed back south to get kebabs. And of course those were delicious too. That was the end of our gluttonous weekend in Mumbai, and I probably gained about 8 pounds.

Vegetarian thalis with dosa (not pictured.)

Dhobi ghat.

Lonely guy in dhobi ghat.

View of Marine Drive right before sunset.

View of Marine Drive right after sunset.

Kebabs! It's just a stand on this side street.

But you can't miss it because there are lots of people milling around.

Happy Diwali!

Another festival! But this was the big one, I was lucky to be in India for Diwali, the Festival of Lights. I was actually in Hampi, which is a very small village that takes a plane, train, and bus to reach, but it was great! All the houses and business have candles lit outside their homes which they use to light crackers, sparklers, everything that was bright and/or noisy. For a few nights all the young and not-so-young spent the nights setting off fireworks and playing with the lights. Here are some of the highlights.

The leftover damage.

Lighting the popper.

So bright!