Hampi, or the best weekend of my life thus far

After a week of work and parties we decided to chill out in Hampi at the weekend. Unfortunately it turned itself into an adventure holiday.
Hampi is about 7 hours north of Bangalore, and is the former capital of south India, when it was a Hindu empire, 14th to 16th Centuries.. Technically, it's a wreck of a town, nothing compared to what it once was, broken idols and empty market places.
What they call imagination rocks litter the landscape in a way that's beautiful and surreal. We arrived at 6AM on Saturday morning by coach. I was grumpy from all kinds of deprivation and ready to chop off Bobby's legs for taking up too much room. The six of us on the trip to briefly introduce, were all i-to-i volunteers; Shawn, Bobby and Nerell from my house, plus Libby and Nabeela. Immediately set upon by rickshaw drivers when we got off the coach, we were driven the half-mile we could easily have walked and pressured into looking at a half-dozen hostels. I lost the will to live, or at least to care about which hostel we picked.. the others did a pretty good job. We ate breakfast (pineapple porridge and chai for me) with a plan of going back to bed but then got energised by reading out our ridiculous horoscopes for the day.

Since I arrived in India it has been a group joke how much I want to ride a moped, and believed that I could despite bad roads and no license. So, seeing as they were available to rent, we did that biz. The city of Hampi is down in a valley with 7 mountains around it - a lot like Rome as our tourguide repeatedly pointed out.

We rented 2 bikes and a rickshaw and a guide, and drove between the ruined temples and statues. At a good few of the places we stopped, whilst we were having elephant heads explained to us, family groups (Indian) asked to take our photo with them, and with their children. After a while we realised we could only take so many variations on a theme under the hot sun, and whilst we sung a lot of the Beatles to keep us going, it was definately time to break for lunch.



So we hopped to the Mango Tree. Which is a total home for hippies, like the desert island house everyone wants to live in, with a view over the meadow with a river and grazing beasts, more of those huge rocks and women washing their colourful saris in the water and little boys swimming. We ate a lot of fantastic food and nearly fell asleep. It's an idyllic place to eat, and pretty good for checking out hot fellow-travellers too.

After lunch Shawn and I swam in the river right next to a huge rock that was inscribed swimming is danger, with a skull&crossbones - I include this incase you haven't picked up I'm trying to sound hardcore. The little boys were delighted when we got in the water, and sat on our shoulders and waved for the camera. The current was very strong and there were nice little rapids to get pulled through the rocks by.


We sat around at the hostel for a little while, admiring the monkeys that were scuttling around us.Then we hired another moped and five of us went out for a scrambly ride.

Then the sky started to get just a few shades darker on the right and we were enjoying the cooler breeze, but it started to spit and then started to pour.. So we turned back and rode faster through the rain, clothes soaked through and sticking to us, eyes full of water.
Back in the village we ran through the rain back to the hostel, water pouring out of chutes and off of buildings like a water ride in a theme park.
The power promptly went off and we sat out on the porch with a Dutch couple, admiring the rain and darkness. Once it eased off, the power remained out but we managed to eat by candlelight in that same restaurant as breakfast, listening to cat power, as the computer managed to work anyway.

Sunday morning we woke up at 5 to catch the sunrise which we'd heard is fantastic. Climbed a mountain, and saw the sun peek over it, resting on the jagged top like a marble about to do a run. Bobby recited some poetry for us up there and we poked at bugs and it was generally a nice experience. Headed for breakfast and asked a man in the restaurant to join us, who was spending a lot of time in India, and is/was an artist from Australia. Then we took a powerboat across the river for ten rupees and a rickshaw to a mountain. Climbed 600 white steps, some of us more quickly than others, to a temple. It was sparkling white in the hard sunshine, and there were monkeys running along the walls, and opening my bag, and a view for miles over people working, as tiny and busy as ants are, and little lorries and fields. Oh and many more imagination rocks, but it was very green and lush. I had a peek inside the temple, and there was the ultimate guru looking man sitting skinny limbs folded up on a mattress, hair and beard just how you'd imagine, and a sleek mobile up to his right ear. I like to think he was counseling some businessman in the States. I sat out on the rocks for what must have been a few hours just looking and thinking and praying and subtly sending out threatening signals to the monkeys. They're pretty much the Indian version of Bristol's seagulls that snatch your food, or just parade around looking menacing. Eventually the rickshaw drivers got fed up of waiting -even though we hadn't asked them to- so we had to leave. On the drive back down to the river, two guys hop in next to the driver and start chatting to me and the boys. End up getting offered ganj wrapped in newspaper - the same way prescription pills come, as it happens.
Spent a lazy few hours in the Mango Tree again, just gorging ourselves on the food and the view. Then wandered around the market streets, and bought an anklet and had henna done, by the same woman who also makes and mends clothes in that shop. It starts to get scary when you think about how multi talented you'd have to be to survive financially. Walked around using only my right hand for the rest of the day, I was so desperate for the henna to stain well.
At the railway station in Hospet, a nearby town, we were more stared at and begged at in half and hour than we'd been all weekend. Myself, Shawn and Nabs bought yellow spicy rice from a moving stall, reasoning that as it felt warm it was okay. Ate it Indian stylee (with just your right hand). I like to think I'm getting pretty good at that now, but you know it still doesn't excuse how silly that was... As my orphanage women told me with amusement and horror a few days later, after recovery, "even we don't eat at the train station!".
The train was something else. Well, perhaps not something else if you spent your life in an asylum from Girl, Interrupted. But it was all exposed metal and blue rubber beds and smelt like piss and unwashed people.. Also we had to fight for the seats we'd reserved and even then there were strangers sleeping directly below us, snoring like crazy, and I slept with my head on my rucksack and my arm wrapped around my bag, terrified someone would take them or touch me.

international facebook

I'll rewrite this, but for die-hard fans

weell we arrived in Hampi at 6AM after sleeping nothing on the coach, and then i pressured everyone into hiring mopeds for the day, and we drove ourselves round the mountains looking at temples.

4:09pmLuke

I don't know how stable this internet connection is by the way, if it cuts out...

woow

that sounds surreally amazing

how was it.

? I meant.

4:11pmLizzy

with a guide telling us things. but he was a bit restrictive and we sort of just wanted to play so we hired a third one, and i took a girl on my back and two others came out to drive around in the afternoon and it started raining and then it was an absolute monsoon and rode really fast getting soaked on these bumpy windy roads.

oh gosh and i forgot to say that for lunch time we went to this place that looks out onto a meadow with grazing buffallo and a river and big rocks* and then shawn & i jumped in the river and little kids came and played with us

4:12pmLuke

wow

that sounds like a fairy tale

4:12pmLizzy

AND after we came back from the wet riding there was a power cut so we sat out on our porch smoking and looking at the rain.

and also on our porch there are monkeys!

overload, sorry

4:14pmLuke

oh my word!

not at all, I can fall asleep in a moment thinking of smoking and monkeys and mopeds and rain and you etc.

that really is incredible.

*The type that pile up ontop of eachother improbably

Man who live in glass house should change clothes in basement.

That was a billboard advertising some sort of house building, but no I don't know if it was a glass house or a better solution to the changing clothes dilemma.
But it reminds me of two important things to tell you about, houses and clothes.

On Sunday I met everyone to do with the project, and moved into Katary Villa, which is across the other side of town. There's me and four boys staying there, two of whom were new as well.
Anyone who I spoke to will know how much I was dreading the other people! But it's been better than I dared hope for. Our three rooms are on the upstairs floor of this house, and join onto a communal space with dining table and all that, I believe there is a TV but I haven't watched it.
We can also hang out the roof, which is flat with two levels. Its a wonderful place to watch the sun go down, have a poetry recitation or talk and talk. Sometimes somebody has a bit of a revelation moment "Oh my God, I'm in India..Awesome" And I try not to giggle. I'm getting those moments too but it tends to be more whilst speeding around in a rickshaw, which is my favourite activity. It slightly helps that people are looking in at you, and little children wave. I likes that.
That night (Sunday) the 'older' housemates - well, actually I am the youngest - took us out to a bar called take 5 . It was here we learnt that dancing is illegal. Still trying to figure out how exactly this translates into life. Because we were offered dancing lessons, and the kids at school dance. But apparently if you stand up in a bar, you are asked to sit down again. ALSO, we heard there are places you can go where the police are paid off and don't come. But the funny thing is everything shuts at 11.30 so we will need to avail of the roof space either way.
As I am writing this it seems more and more like a joke the big kids have played on us.. So I will go home soon to find out.
Re:Clothes. I was slightly fuming yesterday after being told that my teeshirt was too low cut to be appropriate. And then when the person who told me also told everyone else on the project to remind me. I haven't fully collected my thoughts on this, but I'll try.
I know that there are different standards here of how to dress, and I wouldn't dream of showing cleavage. Furthermore I recognise that by being one of a minority here I am responsible like it or not for the way they will think about people from my country/ of my colour.
So this is why from now on, I will wear what they would prefer, at least to work.
I guess the confusion in my mind is I genuinely felt I had chosen a demure option, and so to be treated as though I was trying to sneak in a bit of sex appeal seemed quite ridiculous and I was little upset.
In general also, I don't like the idea of controlling my appearance to fit people's stereotypes. I mean, if somebody thinks that having a tattoo equates to being a lower social class, and having loose morals, and that because of this they wouldn't take the time to get to know me anyway, well, I don't think I want to have that person in my life.
So similarly, if showing my collarbones makes me a slut, and because of that somebody would rather not spend time with me, I have a hard time getting over my dislike of their prejudice about it.
Of course they're also using the reasoning about male attention, and saying it's for my own good and safety to dress as covered up as possible. Oh gosh, I don't know where to begin with that one. If it's truly about my personal well-being, I would still prefer to have the freedom to make this decision, because I know that a comment or even someone touching me does not bother me too much. If it did, I would have never gone clubbing in England, or worked in a bar, or gone to a party!

19/ 06
Oh I need to cut this short and not even consider the male populations potential opinions, and tell you that I went illegally dancing! And there nobody was wearing as much clothes as me :P It was a brilliant semi-famous DJ and we danced til we were liquid and until it turned 11.30. But then there was an afterparty with a local girl dressed like Amy Winehouse and a beautiful penthouse apartment. At this point I realise I have not said anything about the orphanage, which works as a total day/night contrast with this, but I need to do it justice so will wait til Monday.

And finally, we go to Hampi for the weekend, 6 of us volunteerers. I expect to get blessed by an elephant and climbed on by monkeys. And roll into people in my bed on the night bus. yesss.

X

Bangalore, baby.

Oh gosh, am I here?
I keep napping in the hope that when I wake up it may have sunk in a little further. During these naps, the mosquitoes at least have sunk in, regardless of the fact that I embalmed myself in spray and roll-on and wrapped up in my net like a mummy. They have found my ankle - which was already swollen from a fall on a wet doorstep in Cluj - and my left arm.

So I arrived 6AM local time Saturday morning. Located my assigned taxi driver, although many other people offered to take me home, or at least somewhere. I don't know that I can describe the scenery, but I'll try. Its a two-week old airport, built just for me, in the middle of flat flat land. The soil is reddy orange but there were lots of bushes and grasses and people standing by the road and trees which tops are flattened, with orange blossoms. Then the palm trees begun, and they are shockingly slim and tall compared to the rubble at their feet. As we got into the city, the roads filled with yellow rickshaws, turquoise trucks painted with faces and symbols and letters. Also, a million scooters, mostly silver. I was safely in a taxi what was a car, white.

Arrived at Casa Bella, and the taxi driver tried his best to overcharge me, but the landlord was having none of it. My room is a little white palace, a twin room with ensuite. The air is darker, if not cooler, and the floor is shiny. I accessorised for bed with earplugs and eye mask - thank you mummy and daddy for insisting, you were right. Slept until four in the afternoon.
To wash - do you want such personal details? - I knelt on the floor of the bathroom and poured jugs of water over myself. It felt quite picturesque, and also virtuous because it takes only about two or three liters to do it this way. I have my easy dry towel, which looks like blue felt, feels like blue felt and smells like pee. However it does dry up everything.
I went out for a walk, because British Airways recommended that this would make me feel better. Actually I was very tempted to stay inside the gate at Casa Bella, and just peek over the wall at the people filling up buckets, but then I thought, it's best to get it over with. The first scary walk alone, I mean. Well, it was not so scary, although it was as they say an assault on the senses. There are shops all down the road, bike maintenance and groceries and all sorts. All of these have at least 6 people standing outside, some doing something work-like, others just hanging out. There were lots and lots of children, and one group spoke to me, just saying hi, how are you, and showing me the bike they had. There were cows tied up by the pavement (sidewalk, american lovelies) , and the pavement goes from a half metre above road height to nothing. And it's right dusty of course, and the smells are wonderful and terrible. I walked past a place where they grind spices, and there are people selling melons, papaya and jackfruit by the side of the road. So this is sweet and rich and exotic, and contrasting with the smell of sewage running down the road, animals, and rotting food on the street, covered in flies.
I went to bed again - and when I woke up my landlord was very helpful in myriad ways. First, he lent me 1000Re. to survive on until I could change money, and when I mentioned I'd like to get a SIM to use here, he drove me in to town.
Ohh!!! It was incredible. And you know, I don't use exclaimation marks very often. But it was dark by this time, and I've never been on a scooter before. Let alone helmet-less and on Indian streets by night. All the shops, the groundfloors of bigger buildings were lit up, and there were people walking everywhere. Even more people were on scooters to, and it was so fun to laugh and smile at all the children looking at me (I always knew I was worth staring at). There was this balmy air like a florida night, and so much beeping it could be new york. There were people 's carrying all sorts on their shoulders, ladders and bundles and bowls. And obviously, there's no ridiculous right-hand only overtake system, so you can weave to your hearts content. I felt so alive.
Later that evening I ate dinner with the landlord and his wife. Vegetables called drumsticks that tasted a little like pickle, which you have to suck out the insides of, fried slices of sweet potato, and tuna and beef. And then, several types of mango. So good and so spicy and flavorsome. Oh and also I tried some of the red wine that the wife makes herself. She said it was very sour, but it was very sugary and fruity, more so than Hungarian wines, and I tried to explain that compared to English wine, this is very sweet, but she was most content when I conceded it did have a sour aftertaste.

And today is Sunday and I've been to commercial street in a rickshaw. That was bare jokes, and I know I was overcharged and he didn't take me right to where I wanted, but nevermind. I spent half an hour walking down a street looking for the number, only to find that there was no #96 because this was not the correct street. Showed several people the business card of where I was looking for. A little boy about the height of a ten year old asked me for money or food, calling me Ma'am, and it well sounded like he was saying Lizzy. I didn't have any food, but I was hungry too after no breakfast so I bought us some sweetcorn with butter and salt mixed in.

Attempting to get the rickshaw back I was harrassed (this is sarcasm) into checking out a handicrafts shop. It was actually very lovely, and air-conditioned -yess- and I bought a silver bracelet. I was so so tempted by the star rubies.

I know from reading the jewellery book in the Guild that they are as special as the salesman said they are, and they are so beautiful, that whitish star is from the light refraction. Anyway, maybe another day another dollar.

Tonight I meet my 'co-ordinator' and everyone else who's here to teach. I'd much rather hide in my room.

Today I leave England again, for India.
(This post is not live, mother)

Schedule: Four weeks in Bangalore, teaching English at a care centre for abandoned children under 12 years old. I am staying in a guest house where you can of course call when you miss me.. However, as it has a television and ceiling fans, I may be too busy to come to the phone ;)

1220 ist Main, 4th Cross,	Tel	++91 (0) 80 2528 6992
HAL III Stage,
Bangalore
India 560 075

And afterwards, one of my most favourite girls in the whole is coming down from Delhi to whisk me away to Sri Lanka for a week (our house, below). Then I believe the plan is to avoid the monsoon across the south and west areas, heading into the mountains north of Delhi.

Bristol

I'm here and it's gert lush. Just how I left it.

Walked down Gloucester Rd in the sunshine and people were speaking English and pushing prams and not recognising me. Not that I knew them.. It's just I felt they ought to.

Now I'm off to the old hangout for mohijitos and parsnip crisps. Yessss.

Lately

Words are not enough, plus I havent given an update for so long that you have probably given up hope. I have been..

Hanging out with these attractive persons.
Like in this unattractive photo.




And attempting to go to this - TIFF. I have managed to see one film called Losers, which starred puppets. We were confused by the translation which talked about fried chicken - was this some turn of phrase with unknown implications?
No, the narrator was a fried chicken.

An impersonal essay

To my muse:

1.
The backbones of their chromosomes disalign, unwind like spines of tired lovers will.
The haploid cell has 32 instead of 64; if they were not each half the recipe, the number of chromosomes would exponentially increase through successive generations, a big ancestral burden.
Prophase Anaphase Metaphase Telophase
Excepting Oedipal complexes, a child's love for a parent is based on drilling, repetition of the supply and demand, habituation establishing neural pathways thus it cannot help but comply, with the conception that its parent is divine, demi-god.
Old age, young rage
Deity offers protection and redemption. A child carries forward their legacy: looks and personality. Do I verge upon cliche? Perhaps because what is written has already been thought - every child's now taught and caught - Intuition is encoded in your DNA.

2.
A four-step guide to achieving emotional intimacy

The evolutionary benefits of this state are clear. It is the foundation of social cohesion and life that precipitates reproduction.
We shall begin with romantic attachments, our generation's obsessional ideal.
The selection process for a partner is largely a chemical affair calculated to preserve genetic variation and thus improved well-being of future generations. The human parfum is, if not individual, at least sufficiently variegated, the pheromones emitted based on genetic coding. Receptors and neurological processes are 'programmed' - no, forgive the intelligent design -speak - have developed to recognise as most attractive the most different chemical cocktail.
First, anecdotes on the subject: One wonders if the prevalent use of aftershave and eau de toilettes suppresses these instincts, containing aphrodisiacs - molecules with no imprint of the genetic character of the wearer - which confuse the brain's sensible system, a new form of witchcraft.
Research has shown that women on the pill have dulled receptors, and this results in falling shockingly out of 'love' when she ceases to be medicated,and recognises the turn-off hormones of her mate.

On the subject of emotional intimacy we must first make an assumption (because discussions are no fun without assumptions). Say that our sould is a projection, a hologram created by the established thought patterns of our brains, the systems of electrical pathways - neurological processes.
In this case, when people find themselves 'on the same wavelength', is it that these patterns and thought associations are similar. And is this mesh a result of the conditioning of their childhood; links forged between right and wrong, truth with ideology, freedom versus captivity. Or does the structure of the brain owe a larger debt to DNA, carrying forward a legacy of ancestral personality?

i. For persons to become emotionally intimate they must first betray some secrets of their structure, through honesty, intended or accidental; values and ideals (if when these things aren't 'real').

ii. I theorize the next step is - disregarding the idea of empathy - a pleasing similarity in thought pattern. All humans long to inhabit the mind of another if only for a minute, and when they encounter one who processes the same way that they do, they feel as though they have.

iii. An appropriate next step is a shared experience, preferrably one which engineers a mutual trust and feeling of togetherness. This could be the fight for women's rights (in the nineteenth century especially), hunting together to support their families, or feeling like its us and them against the world of toxic politics and apathy.

iv. By this stage the humans will have become convinced of this elusive illusion of understanding one and other, and as their grey matter establishes these habits, so they establish these habits - sharing confidences and worries and finding a form of validation in their easy reception by the other.

Within writing i recalled what intimacy is not, however hard we might have tried:

Name checked the same things on our facebook pages
Went on some dates
Made love made haste through what we knew to be appropriate stages
I'd've liked to fall in love with your handwriting, liked to fall in love with the way you sing
But you only sang with the Smiths while you were driving me home, as if in anticipation of being alone
Wrote the Valentine in pencil, pretty transitory,
much like the placement of our pen and ink story.
If we agreed on the film we watched it was all well and good, and when I didn't get your music, well who said that I should.
Awoke from shared dreams with some stifled screams, rejected raised levels of feigned intimacy.

3.
The shadow milky moonlight threw was longer leaner still than her sleek silhouette. He told her as she stretched of the papers he had read. Understood the world, had seen what it held,
Cat's best plan is to experience all he can.
Said he was a cynic and he'd tell her in a minute why this was the only conclusion for one without delusion.
She surveyed as the cosseted cat was scooped up my puffed up palms; strolled further along the fence to view through yellowed lace the Kitten.
Obliging enough to refer to him as this, still she smirked as his dried-out tongue lapped up the cream poured from a labeled jar:

Miss and the Kitten stood in the kitchen eating their curds and whey.
Miss crushed too many pills and told of all her ills to the silent cynic at her knee.
They laid down together, the two of them so clever.
He dreamt of birds, and she of their feathers on a mask she wore once in a marquee