Day 25: February 12

We got there quickly. In Gadag, we had a transfer to the train to Hospet. We had two hours, and we decided to go into town and look for food. First, we found an ice cream café. There was a wide selection of all kinds of ice cream; I would have tried everything — mango, nut, chocolate, and lots of others. I liked the ice cream (not Italian, of course, but in India it’s nice to eat reasonably tasty ice cream).

Volchiy wasn’t very impressed with the ice cream and said that in Italy it’s definitely tastier. Which is understandable. (But while we were in Italy and I kept telling him that this was the most delicious ice cream in the world, he resisted and didn’t believe me. Well, now he does. Everything is relative?)

The second train ride was also very pleasant and just as fast. And here we are in Hospet. We take a tuk-tuk to the bus station to catch a bus to Hampi there.

We get out of the tuk-tuk, and while Volchy is paying the driver, I notice a bus pulling out of the bus station, with a scrolling sign on top that says “Hampi.” I stop the bus, we jump on board — hooray, we’ll soon reach our destination. On the bus, Volchy still can’t calm down — “How did you manage to notice that it said Hampi?” I shrug contentedly. Thanks to this, we didn’t have to wander around the bus station looking for the platform and wait again. Our day-long journey is slowly coming to an end.
When we arrived in Hampi, it was already getting dark. We checked into the hotel and went for a walk.

The village of Hampi itself is very tiny — a couple of narrow streets with tiny houses, each of which is either a hotel or a restaurant, or, in the worst case (for the owners), a shop selling cookies and water.

The setting sun beautifully illuminated the already striking landscape of this place. There is amazing nature here: mountains of pink stone boulders, palm trees, and green rice fields. All of this is truly delightful.

We just went off without any particular goal, wherever our eyes led us, but here in Hampi, apparently, wherever you go — it’s beautiful everywhere. Among the natural beauty lie the ruins of an ancient city. It is hard to believe now (after all, the village of Hampi barely has a few hundred residents), but once this was the capital of a kingdom and about 500,000 people lived here!

We made it to the ruins and walked along the wall. We saw people climbing the nearby mountain to watch the sunset there, while all the ruins were left to us — it was so wonderful. We didn’t want to leave. There is such a sense of peace here. Silence, palm trees all around, stones glowing in the sunset light, and not a soul anywhere.

In the evening, we wandered into the most popular restaurant here (we found that out later) — Mango Tree. I don’t know why everyone likes it so much; the food there was decent, and the atmosphere was pleasant. Throughout Hampi, it is forbidden to sell and consume beer and meat. Everyone obediently drank cola.