BY BOAT OR BY GOAT I WILL HAVE MY PRIZE (Hampi)

Look how excited Felix is for ruins!

Hampi is this pretty awesome small town in central India that used to be the capital of one of the major empires. It's full of amazingly awesome ruins and really really really insane rock formations. It's also got lots and lots of monkeys, cows, lizards, dogs, and one elephant! Hampi also had by far the most power outages I've had to deal with in India. Normally there's been 1-2 outages a day in most cities, Hampi had 6-8.

The best outage, if best if really the word, was out first night when a storm blew down a tree and we literally lost power from 8pm until around noon the next day. You might think "that's not so bad, i'll just light some candles and it'll be dandy!" WELL YOU'RE FUCKING WRONG. IT IS HOT AS SHIT IN HAMPI AND WHEN YOU HAVE NO POWER THE ONE FUCKING CELING FAN DOESN'T SPIN AND YOU HAVE ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE WORST NIGHT EVER I HAVEN'T STOPPED SWEATING IN 15 HOUR DAYS. Yea, it sucked. I had to sleep with a wet towl on me just to not be hot enough to go insane. A lot of people in the neighborhood slept outside but there's mad mosquitos there too so it seems like a bad idea for my Idon'twanttogetmalaria plans.

Despite the rough start Hampi is pretty cool. I went to the river in the morning to watch them wash the temple elephant (her name is Lakshmi!) and the whole village was pretty much there bathing and washing clothes and stuff. It was a really cool scene and lots of people and naked babies just chillin in the river. The grown men were still having water fights and the brahmans were sitting around meditating. I learned two things that morning: it takes over two hours to wash an elephant and it's crazy how many peoples lives still revolve around a river for their water usage.

We rented a scooter and walked a lot and saw all kinds of crazy ruins and old temples and stuff. There were a few super awesome statues that stuck out like one of the bull Nandi who's Shiva's mount and looks really like homer and a really awesome ganesh one and this really great one of Lakshmi Narasimha which is one of Vishnu's incarnations where he has the head of a Lion. 

Bull:

Vishnu Lion:

The main temple there is called Vittala temple and it's super old, super big, and super awesome. We took a boat there which is a pretty short ride but we got to sit in this awesome circular boat and were lucky enough to be joined by two fucking awesome looking pilgrims who chilled with us and asked for cigarettes. They were totally nuts looking. 

Boat:

Pilgrims:

Vittala Temple:

On the way back we figured we'd walk but since this is India there is no clear path and we ended up basically having to boulder our way home. There was a herd of goats near us who we passed and climbed some difficult ish rocks. As we stopped to catch our breath the goats trotted by and clearly took an easier path than we had. After that we figured we should probably just follow goats since they knew what was going on and they pretty much lead us back. It was pretty cool and the inspiration for the title of this blog post.

Thank You Goats

Anyways a few quick hits on Hampi:
1. We stayed at the Gopi hotel that is clearly building an empire on one of the blocks. They owned a convenience stand, two buildings of rooms, a rooftop cafe, and an internet cafe.
2. there was a ridiculous stoner ass bakery with blacklights and stuff that had crazy blacklight posters of ganesh and shiva. the food there was quite good for the most part, great pizza and decent fallafel but their attempt at a burrito was the saddest thing ever. Just picture lasagna with beans tossed in. it was one of those "have you ever even googled burrito?"
3. chopsuey is weird friend noodle stuff in sweet and sour sauce. It's not good.
4. Some ant decided to crawl in my shoe and bite me for a while. it really sucked and hurt like the dickens!
5. there's this other restaurant called the Mango Tree that has a really nice view of the river and pretty good food. it also had a cockroach the size of my thumb just chilling nearby.
6. Everywhere in hampi serves this lemon mint juice thing. basically a virgin mohito and the most refreshing thing ever.