Expect Me When You See Me

This was my favourite day of the trip. My digestive troubles were gone and we’d seen about half of the main places to see in Hampi so we could take it easy (the travel guides tell you that you need a week to see Hampi but I’m not sure how because even if you go to see the temples across the river we would have managed it in 3-4 days. And I’d suspect your average tourist would get a lot more bored of yet more temples than we did.) We hired another taxi driver for the day and this one only spoke some basic Hindi and even less English.

He took us first to the first of two Ganesha images in the area. It was surrounded by huge boulder so I left R. and her leg to rest and hiked over to see them and take silly pics. After that, he took us to a nearby temple which I think was the Sri Krishna temple. It was uncrowded for a bit until a massive group of school children arrived. Around the corner we walked down a pleasant path beside a stream to see the Ugra Narasimha image which was awesome and impressively intact for something carved in 1528 and left out in the elements. Right next door to it was Hampi’s 3m tall Shivalinga, surrounded by water because everyone needs to see a massive penis and vagina at least once in their life. We took a break then to have some fresh coconut juice (which I don’t like but R. enjoyed it) and get some freshly pressed sugar cane juice. When I was a kid, I once helped harvest sugar cane and make sourgum molasses so I must have tried the cane juice then, but I sure don’t remember it tasting so amazing. Might be the different type of cane too.

From there, he took us to the Hazara Rama temple which was on the other side of the King’s Palace complex. It had some decent sculptures including some black pillars inside, and the Ramayana was depicted along the exterior inner walls, though they were weirdly built over in places. From there, we asked him to take us to the Underground Shiva temple so called because it pretty much sits below ground level at this point. It was still a bit flooded from the monsoon which made it cool to explore, but didn’t have any of the beautiful carvings that the other temples boast.
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We had to wake up at 6:30am to catch a taxi to the airport. I had about 2hrs sleep total but we showered and made it there. The security for the airport is really odd in that they have separate men and women’s lines to go through the detector but there are twice as many men’s lines so the women’s ones always back up. They make you walk through the detector but they don’t really care since they run a wand over your body in a little blocked off room to protect your modesty or something. Ugh. Once through, we stopped in the bookstore again and I bought a really popular detective novel called The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken which is part of the Vishpuri Series which is kinda the number one ladies detective agency novels of India. I finished it on the trip and it is very good though much more understandable if you’ve been to India. We then headed to the plane. It was a two hour flight to Bangalore and the vegetarian food on the plane was particularly tasty. I tried to nap but it wasn’t taking. Once there, we caught a taxi to the main train station and stored our luggage before heading off into the city again. After checking out the rather sketchy places near the train station we headed to Mahatma Ghandi road instead. There, we were looking for a café but got sucked into a handicraft place. We were fine in the sculpture area because they were overpriced but then we went upstairs and the textiles and jewelry were really cheap *sigh* So now I have a gorgeous handwoven silk scarf and a few beautiful silver earrings.

After that, we wandered into Café Coffee Day where I had an absolutely bizarre strawberry lemonade which inexplicably had breath mints in it. Their chocolate cake was nice though and we just chilled for a bit before figuring out where to eat. We were looking for non-sketchy local food but ended up in a restaurant called 20 Feet High which served steak amongst other things. R. had a delicious sheppards pie with Indian spices and I had vegetable stuffed pancakes which were rather weird but not bad. I also had a margarita (not frozen) which was very nice. We then headed back to the train station and ended up waiting on the platform for a few hours before our 10pm sleeper train arrived. We were in the third class air conditioned car which meant they gave us scratchy sheets, a blanket and a flat pillow. This was not really enough to make it comfortable especially since there were no more curtains and people refused to go to sleep for awhile. I felt a bit like I’d gone back in time a few decades. I managed to fall asleep by lying on my back wearing a sleep mask and earplugs around 11:30pm. I woke up at 2am and had to rush to the really disgusting train toilet with diarrhea. I then tried very carefully to get some more sleep while not having any accidents, but was awoken at 5:30am when the top bunk guys (R. was in the middle bunk and I was on the bottom) decided to have a very loud conversation. After another run to the toilet, I gave up on sleeping as did R. who was also feeling poorly. We huddled on the bottom bunk, playing games on our phones and ignoring the guy in the opposite bunk who was perfectly content to stare at us for hours on end until we arrived in the tiny town of Hospet. Hospet was really interesting with tons of people living in one room houses, chickens and pigs browsing in piles of garbage and dirt roads. We were hounded by the rickshaw drivers through the whole 5min walk to our hotel since we were the only foreigners who got off the train there.

Luckily, the hotel we’d booked for about $40 a night each was pretty much the equivalent of a 4-5 star hotel anywhere else. We checked in early since the train had arrived at 7:30am or so, then I showered, suffered on the toilet and crawled into bed and went to sleep. R. fell asleep while I was in the shower. I woke up again at 2pm. Ran to the bathroom then went back to sleep until 4pm since I had pretty much had almost no sleep for the past few days. Since I could not be far from the toilet (despite Imodium and pepto bismul) we decided not to venture out that day and ordered some plain rice for me since I was still inexplicably hungry. I gave up and took some antibiotics I had for severe diarrhea and despite being quite gassy for that meal and some food we ordered later that night that seems to have done the trick regarding the diarrhea part. We had cauliflower (gobi) Manchurian that night which was delicious. Manchurian is Indian Chinese food which is packed with Indian spices and I think it’s delicious even though it’s really not Chinese food.

Gimpo airport is only a half hour away from where I live by the airport train so I actually only left for the airport about an hour and a half before my flight. Check in went well and I was able to read for a half hour before we boarded the plane. The flight to Shanghai was only a few hours so I arrived in Shanghai at the Hongqiao airport fairly quickly since going through luggage check and the immigration took quite awhile. I was transferring to Pu Dong airport on the other side of the city but I had a little over eight hours before my flight to India. So I caught the subway to People’s Square in the center of the city and dragged my luggage around until I figured out where the Shanghai Museum was. By this point it was about 3:30pm and the museum closed at 5pm so I stored my luggage and prioritized what I wanted to see. This wasn’t very hard though since they had halls devoted to the two materials I study – bronzes and jade. The bronze hall was really interesting. They had a wide variety and a display on how various bronzes were made, plus a mirror which reflects a hidden picture which I’d never seen in person. There was also a display of recently excavated bronzes from the area. Next I headed to the jade area which was also interesting and had a great video on jade manufacture which I wish I could have gotten a copy of. After that I checked out the silk road display which was small and not very interesting, briefly looked through the pottery and porcelain areas, and bought a pin which is what I collect when I visit places. I tried to get into the main museum shop but it had already closed so I shrugged and headed out the door to Nanking Road the main shopping area of Shanghai. It’s a pretty interesting place with tons of people and shops along with an odd selection of international shops like a whole shop devoted to M&Ms. I was looking for a place to eat some local food preferably duck, but when I wandered off into side streets the options were street food which I was not risking or restaurants full of smokers which my asthma couldn’t take. So I ended up in what was basically a mall devoted to food with restaurants on its third floor. There I had a very tasty crispy duck with rice which was the best duck I’ve had in my life, and a honey, pear, jujube and something else hot tea (it being about 35 degrees in Shanghai that day). I then bought a delicious cream puff and headed out into the street again. I walked around a bit then spotted a place which made real hot chocolate with real milk which I miss very much in Korea so I got a small hot chocolate and took advantage of their wifi for a bit. Then I headed back onto the subway which was quite crowded since it was rush hour. I could have taken the subway all the way there but it seemed more fun to take the maglev train because how often do you get to ride a train floating on magnets? It only took 8min to get to the airport on the train because it sped up to 301 km/hr. Once at the airport I almost was in trouble since they’d overbooked the flight by several people and wanted to reroute me through Singapore making me arrive in Delhi several hours later than I should and with no way of informing my friend. I told them this and was very lucky since I was traveling alone, there was one empty seat and it became mine. I had to run through the airport to catch the last bus to the plane but oh well.

The flight was weird because it went overnight but they fed us food at like, 11pm and I ended up with vegetarian Indian food which was pretty good. I had an asthma attack once I got on the plane from all the pollution, running, smoke, and cold no doubt so I didn’t really feel up to trying to sleep until about four hours in. Instead I read my book and watched part of a movie before dozing uncomfortably for awhile. We landed in Delhi at the ungodly hour of 2am. I then found one of the more reputable taxi companies my friend had directed me to, and I was given a particularly clueless driver to take me into New Delhi where I was staying with my friend in the Fulbright house (since we both have Fulbrights). After getting lost, calling my friend, not understanding her directions, asking a rickshaw driver to show us, then driving past it because he didn’t give me time to read the house numbers, I ended up at the right place and met up with R. We headed into the house which had a communal kitchen and a nicely appointed room with a shower and really fluffy towels. The bed was rather hard as expected and the room was too light for me to sleep but I was exhausted so after chatting for a bit and giving her my presents from Korea (oreos, fluffy panda socks, pizza chips, and croissants) we went to sleep.