So i'm currently having a bit of a camera malfunction so for now this is only about half of my photos from Hampi. hopefully the rest will be up soon

So we went on another trip this weekend. This is the first excursion that I have been on without my professor so I was a little nervous about that. And we were also taking the train, which I was nervous about. But I had only heard good things about the train so I was trying to be positive. When we got to the train station it was so crowded. It is really hard to maneuver through a giant crowd with 5 girls, and not get lost. But we made it and sat on the platform for a bit waiting for the train to come. Finally a train rolled up at the platform that our train was supposed to arrive on. So we franticly ran up and down the train looking for our car but we never found it, after about 20 minutes of this we were informed by a conductor or something that it was a different train and ours was delayed. Thank goodness we didn’t get on that one or we would have been in store for a whole different kind of adventure. After about a 2 hour delay our train finally showed up and we all piled on. The trains are actually kind of nice. We were in non-ac sleeper, which means we had beds, but no air conditioning. So the way it’s set up is that there are two big benches across from one another, the but part of the bench is the first bed, then the back of the bench swings up and there are chains that come down from the ceiling that latch onto it to make a second bed and then above that there is a third bed. And it’s like this on the other bench too. So each bench can seat 3 people and sleep 3 people and each birth (that’s what they call the collection of beds) can sleep 6. It’s not nearly as bad as I had thought it would be. The people we were sitting next to were really nice. It was a family with a really cute little girl that we all got to play with. And sleeping on it was not too bad. I brought snuggles with me and used him as a pillow. By the time we woke we were only an hour outside of Hampi so it worked out really well.

Once we got to Hampi we hoped on a rickshaw and asked the driver to take us to our hotel. Well, he decided that he was going to take us on a hotel tour of Hampi, stopping at every hotel we went by that all just happened to be more than the one we had already booked. Finally we made it to our hotel and checked in. It was a pretty quaint little place. The rooms were very basic; 2 beds pushed together under a mosquito net, and a desk. But it’s really all you need when you’re there. After checking in we ventured out for breakfast since all any of us had had on the train was chips and chocolate. We found this really cute little restaurant called the moonlight café and sat down for breakfast. It was run by this really nice family that really excited to see us. (everyone in Hampi was excited to see us since it’s the off season for tourism). After breakfast we headed out for the ruins. Well we all figured that we would be active young girls and walk to the ruins. We clearly did not know just how spread out these things was. We also didn’t know exactly where it was. So after wandering around for about an hour we finally stopped to ask for directions (it’s hard to remember that you’re lost when the scenery is so beautiful!). After about another 2 miles back the way we came we finally made it into the royal center. Oh my gosh it was so beautiful. Every building was had pretty similar features. But they were all lovely. The first one we found was the underground temple which they found a completely intact temple that was built into the ground. It was so neat.

We did a lot more walking around and exploring and then we decided to go back into town for lunch. So we hopped into another rickshaw and went to grab lunch in Hampi. We ended up eating at this little reasturant on top of a building. When we walked up there there was no one up there except a street dog. So we went to head back down until this women came running up the steps telling us that they were open. So we sat down and placed our order. But then the women left, and we didn’t realize where she had gone until she came back with the produce to make our lunch. Talk about fresh. The family also owned a 2^nd hand shop right across the street so while we were waiting for our food to be cooked we did a little shopping. The woman that owned the shop had the cutest baby in the whole world.

After lunch we were all a little tired and so we decided to just explore the city instead of head back out to the ruins. In the city there were a couple of temples that we got to go look at. One of them had an elephant inside. I got to pet it. He was real sweet. Then we climbed up some rocks and hung out and watched the sun go down. That was probably the best part of the day.

The next day we woke up early, checked out of the hotel, went to moonlight again for breakfast. This time we decided to get a rickshaw for the day. We were able to hire a rickshaw to drive us around to all the ruins so we didn’t have to walk. It made it all a lot more enjoyable. We got to see all the things that hampi is famous for. The queens bath, the stone chariot etc etc. It was all amazing. Then we went to dinner at the mango tree restaurant. To get there you have to walk through a banana plantation. How cool is that??? Pretty cool. And then we had a delicious meal under a bunch of mango trees. It was the perfect way to end the perfect weekend. After dinner we headed back to the trainstation to catch our 10pm train. Let me tell you the train station is far creepier at 9 at night. Regardless we got on our train and all fell asleep. I woke up a couple of times in the night but it wasn’t too bad.

All in all it was an amazing trip and it just reaffirmed my feeling that I enjoy country india so much more than city india.

me and snuggles on the train! and yes of course i did bring him along!



You can take the girl out of america, but you can't take america out of the girl....


The lovely miss anna












































coconut head!!!




This boy was really nice and gave us directions



jane of the jungle








Palm trees through barbed wire



Goats infront of a temple








Ganesha!









There were giant boulders like this everywhere, just hanging out.