Hampi

More trains,

Went to the Ancient Holy city of Hampi where they have many many many many ruined temples.......and no meat...........or beer.

Here is a picture of me eating a veggie burger, I tried to pretend it was meat and fool my body but after four days I was felling it bad, I needed some meat sweats.

This one isn't unique to Hampi but I got a photo of it,

construction sites have alot of female workers and they to do most of the manual lifting,

this poor lady is carrying a huge bag of cement on her head!!!!!!

I can barely lift a bag of cement off the ground let alone carry it with my neck. Sometimes my neck gets tired just from carrying my big head around.

The landscape of Hampi is famous for its "balancing rock" formations,

Cailín showing off her Karate kid moves.

Went on a walking tour through the countryside to some of the temples,

This is a small monkey temple, they smear food on the monkey's mouth because monkeys are greedy fatso's.

The priestess lady who looked after the food smearing on the monkey god temple thingy dotted us.

Went to see a huge temple and market which was all destroyed by Muslim invaders (Thats it behind me),

They say this place was incredibly rich, the markets would sell gold and precious stones by the kilo, these days you can buy bananas and spices there,

This is the biggest market where people still live and its where we stayed, the old pillars on the right is original old shit, apparently the bottom was for the gold and jewels sellers and the top was for flower sellers....no food for sale then.

Here is the same market, at the far end is where people live but its very long and the end is uninhabited.

Cailín doing here impression of the elephant headed Hindu god Ganesh,

Further along the walk we went down the hill to the market that was behind us.

there was a huge ruined temple there with very.....interesting carvings.

They started off quite raunchy,

Cailín mimicking the voluptuous carving behind her (the sculptor was definitely a bloke)

Then they got decidedly pornographic........

Bad! Monkey bad!.....

Oh! very bad monkey! Bold Stop That!!!!!

Oh noooo! just the look on his face!!! its horrible......like looking at that thing in the Goonies watch Basic Instinct.

Oh for the love of god!, Bad tiger! get down from there or I'll hit you on the nose with a newspaper.

A FISH!!!! REALLY?!

Well at least we know we weren't the generation to invent perverts.

Oh my word......well they certainly don't have carvings like this in my local church....they might get more people going if they did.

I'm not even sure what everyone is doing in this one but I'm pretty sure it means the Indian's have a lot of suppressed sexual tension.

Spent the day before this trying to explain to Cailín what a Millstone was and then out of no where we find one, well not actually a Millstone is the bit that goes on top and that's missing but it certainly helped.

The market even had what looked like a cool swimming pool, it was actually a water reservoir but it would be a very cool swimming pool.

Finished the tour with a trip down thee river on a round boat made of bamboo and tar.

Reminded me a lot of that old Irish boat that was round too, but I can't remember the name. Someone look that up for me.

Went for a great dinner that night in the middle of a banana grove overlooking the river.

Cailín got an amazing "Thali" which is a traditional meal where you get a little bit of lots of things, its really great for figuring out what you like and what you don't but this one was so good we ate it all.

Next day we did a cycling tour to some of the temples that were further out,

it was very hot so we bought a lemon soda water off this nice chap, just lemon juice and soda, the soda was locally made and came in a resealable glass bottle that used a marble as the stopper, it was very cool, and tasty until he recommended we add pepper....not so good.

Visited things like this which is a "Shiva Lingum" Shiva is a faceless god who is represented by the Lingum, a representation of both the male and female genitalia.

Willies are everywhere in India.....

And this underground yoga temple for the king and his family which had a system of water ways which acted as natural air conditioning.

Found a room full of bats, I was too frightened to go in just stuck in the camera.

Outside we were greeted by a gaggle of school girls whose hands we had to all shake.

And this place where they housed the eleven royal elephants,

Cailín once again doing her amazing elephant impression in one of the elephant stables.

A princess lived here or something like that,

I'm just resting here but it looks like I'm taking it up the rear via the carving, I swear I'm not though,

Went to a statue of the scariest looking god, he has the head of a lion, but it looks like he has the head of Garfield the cat on drugs, I can't think of anything scarier than that,

Maybe that's why they have a huge walls and and a metal barrier around it.

Saw what they said was the worlds largest statue made from a single stone,

Its Cailín's favourite, Ganesh!

Elephant impression!

Saw these two rocks which local legend says they are two sisters.

Next day went for a walk to a huge temple thing which had a chariot made entirely from stone!!!

And even better than that they had a temple with musical pillars!

You see the smaller pillars that surround the main pillars, like banisters on a staircase, well in the olden days there would be loads of musicians banging them with wooden sticks but your not allowed to hit them so they will not get damaged, your not even allowed get closer than I am here to them without the guard on the left giving out to you,

BUT, this being India the guard in this picture is actually trying to get me to bribe him to play the pillars, we refused on principle but a group of Indian tourists nearby overhear this and just when we are walking out come running up and drag us back, they have bribed the guards for us and we are called over to hear the pillars being played, they hit them gently with their fingers and a clear note rings out, it sounds lovely, like a xylophone.

We thank the fellow tourists and try to pay them back for the bribing but they refuse, we are their guests, very friendly.

Finally went to the biggest temple that is in the centre of town.

Its main tower was seven stories tall.

Met a holy elephant called "Lakshmi" the name means "money"

You can give the elephant money and she will give the money to her trainer and put her truck on your head as a sign of blessing, its gives great good luck in Hinduism.