• Contact
  • Welcome

Rachel

~ following the white rabbit…

Rachel

Category Archives: Hampi

Hampi: Indoors

30 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by Rachel in Hampi, India, Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Hampi, India, Travel, Traveling, Travelling

20181228_095754
Our room

It is season time which means rooms are double the price they were in April.  Our old room was available but out of our budget.

This time we booked in advance as we were too chicken to turn up for Christmas without a booking.  Our first room was okay, it had a kind of rustic charm but it smelled a bit from the sink and was a bit mouldy in places.  Plus the toilet seat was broken, or rather, it wasn’t broken it just wasn’t attached to the toilet.  Couples who argue about how the toilet seat should be left might have fallen out big time, as it needed to be lifted on and off each time.

That wasn’t really a big deal though, at least we had a toilet seat.  In Nepal there was no toilet seat at all, and we had to sit directly on the porcelain loo base.  It was cold in Nepal and we were suffering variously from traveller’s diaorriah alternating with constipation so it wasn’t much fun.

Our first room here was by the staff area and work started very early the first few mornings; running buckets of water, beating laundry, chopping of food, and talking loudly.  And at night, through an open vent between ours and one of the staff rooms came some very loud snoring.

We were considering moving out, but then we saw an empty room on the other side of the courtyard and went in to have a peek.  It looked and smelled better, had a Western style toilet with a fixed on seat, plus an Indian style toilet.

It’s on the other side of the courtyard to all the taps so it’s quieter in the mornings, and the snoring is a lot less intrusive from here.  There’s no sink- there is a low-ish wall tap and a shower- and the fan is either full blast or off, but you can’t have it all.

20181228_093235My husband went around the other way after seeing that this cow- with big horns- was standing in the entrance/exit
20181228_095851
Our room- eagle eyed readers might spot our regular companions Odomos for mosquitos and Oreos
20181228_100034
Our bathroom- I don’t want you to think I’m doing one of those super glamorous travel blogs

Thank you very much for reading

I wish you a very Happy New Year and all the very best for 2019

For photos of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Getting in touch/supporting the blog

Comment on posts (comments are public)
Send a message via the Contact Box (private message via email)
Press the like button to let me know you were here/liked it
Consider sharing on Facebook or Twitter if you think your friends might like it

Thank you for your support

So many things to love in Hampi

28 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by Rachel in December 2018, Hampi, India, Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Hampi, happiness, India, Personal growth, Travel, Traveling, Travelling

20181227_09504820181224_07412320181224_071055

20181225_160757 (1)20181225_004233

20181224_062237

In Varkala we were ill, in Bangalore we wandered around the Botanical Gardens wondering about The Future, and in Hampi we got happy again.  There’s so much to love here.

Temples, so many temples.  There was a huge festival and many people slept inside the temple afterwards.

Monkeys.  On Christmas Eve I watched a monkey eating scraps from a bin.  I bought some bananas and dropped them into the bin (I was cautious about being too obvious having got surrounded by monkeys in Nepal), but unfortunately this frightened the monkey and they came after me, teeth bared.  They didn’t want the bananas either.  An Indian man shooed it away and gave me back the bananas which I fed to some less intimidating cows.  On Christmas Day we went back to the main temple and hand fed the monkeys peanuts in shells, which they liked.  On Boxing Day we threw some peanuts on the ground for some languid looking monkeys, one of whom quickly sprang up and jumped on my husband’s bag where the nuts were.  ‘Never describe a monkey as languid,’ he said when he had recovered.  And just to cement the full range of monkey experiences, my husband saw one cradling a dead monkey in its arms.

The scenery is almost too much to take in, it is so unreal looking but so peaceful at the same time.

The people
Such sweet simple pleasures to be had here.  Buying roasted peanuts in shells, bananas, coconuts and chai from the roadside stalls.  Peanuts have become the new cigarettes, prompting interactions and sharing them with people.  So many school trips and families here for pilgrimage, sleeping outside in the temple area or at the roadside.  So many kids saying hi to us.

Everything…  We arrived early in the morning on Christmas Eve after a night of little sleep (there was a reason why ours were the only two beds left, they were over the back wheel arch, and the road to Hampi is very bumpy!)  Sitting at the chai stall under the full moon, the stalls closed and brown, the streets dusty and grey.  Bits of colour from the pink and purple of skirts.  Buses arriving, tuk tuks coming to meet the new arrivals.  Every place is something new, a new start, a new state of mind.  I am so happy we are ending our India journey in Hampi, where I first fell in love with India back in April.

Thank you very much for reading

For more pictures of our trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Getting in touch
Comment on posts (comments are public)
Send a message via the Contact Box (private message via email)
Press the like button to let me know you were here/you liked it
Send a message via Instagram thisisrachelhill

Hampi Heaven

20 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by Rachel in Hampi, India, Minimalism, Personal growth, spirituality, Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Anjuna, Hampi, India, love, Personal growth, spirituality, Travel

image3.jpegphoto by Jude Atkinson-Hill

We stayed on the other side of the river to the temples for two nights and on our second evening we walked up the path where people go bouldering.  We walked amongst huge boulders that are somehow balanced securely on the rock slopes, looking as if they might fall but have probably been there forever, balanced on each other like strange rock snowmen.  Walls of sandy coloured boulders and rocks, almost polystyrene looking, like Planet of the Apes or Star Trek, unreal, as if this is where the world started.  Looking around it is easy to imagine that there was a big explosion and everything fell to earth as it was created, (even us, I whispered to myself.)

We sat on huge flat rocks that were so warm that I had to put my feet on my bag to stop them burning, and watched the sun set behind the clouds.  I felt myself absorbing the sun’s energy, as well as the power and energy of those huge rocks.

I had meditated for a second time in the beach hut in Agonda, again dropping into it easily after a little yoga.  I couldn’t help remembering that when I had meditated a few days earlier, the overriding sensation had been of FEAR.  This time though, it wasn’t there and although I may have initially suggested it to myself (it’s hard in meditation to know if an idea has come from my thinking brain or from deep inside me), however it felt right and didn’t change, and this time the word was STRONG.

On the rocks was not exactly meditating, it was more reflection, mindfulness and energy absorption.  But still definitely not fear.

Even though I am in India I am still the same, of course.  I still get anxious and have a bit of OCD, but loads of stuff is okay or much better than I expected.  I coped fine with the heat in Hampi which was my biggest fear.  (The weather reports said it was 39°C but felt like 42°C, whatever that means.  Hot, anyway, hot enough that when I heard it was 32°C in Goa I thought that sounded good).  I have even come to kind of enjoy the feeling of sweat pouring off me, as if I am being detoxified, which I suppose I am.  I also like the sense of languidness that is absolutely essential in the afternoons and often includes a nap.

In the hottest weather my clothes work and I feel really comfortable:  really baggy black linen trousers, white (well, they were when I bought them) shirts, a lilac hat, with a cream scarf draped over the top.  As long as I don’t look in the mirror…  When it cools down a little I do my best to look nice:  shower, brush my hair and put it up into a neat bun, put on a fresh black vest top and black knee-length skirt, ditch the hat, drape my cream scarf over my shoulders.  I have hardly any clothes, but they are all functional and they all go together.

My tummy is fine (although I have a new standard of fine since being here).  I don’t care about products, I don’t seem to need to moisturise as much here anyway, and when I run out of Oil of Olay (which I have used every day for twenty years) I am just going to buy something else, anything.  Likewise even with my beloved Body Shop hemp handcream I only experience mild anxiety re what I am going to do when it runs out.

Maybe it was Hampi, maybe it was PMS, but I found myself feeling so raw, so emotional, so happy I almost cried (well actually I did a little bit, discreetly).  India is obviously so steeped in spirituality, and being here is such sweet sensory overload, that it would be surprising if I walked through it without feeling something.  And Hampi is such a special place.

We got the ferry over the river each day, just a short distance, the man does this back and forth all day.  We were reminded of Siddhartha.  (Later, one of my favourite bloggers SMUT. and Self-Esteem mentioned Siddhartha in a really inspiring post called Atheism and Spirituality).  In a similar vein, we met the man who takes the money at the main temple, he has worked there, caring for the temple for forty years.

At the huge Ganesh statue, carved from a single piece of stone, we arrived at the exact moment that the woman who works there cleaning and minding it arrived and opened the gates so that we could go inside and hug the huge warm belly of Ganesh and walk around him.

It was too hot to walk everywhere so we got a rickshaw to The Lion God Narasimha, stopping for coconuts when we got too hot.

20180417_054455.jpg

Meeting Indian people was nice.  We met people in Goa but that was largely a pop up population, there only for the season before packing up and going home to places including Kerala and Nepal.  In Hampi almost everyone we met had been born there and lived there all their lives.  Our rickshaw driver had lived amongst the ruins, before the people were moved out from there and his family moved into the town.  There were lots of Indian tourists who were very friendly and even took our photographs and took selfies with us!  A Catholic nun was concerned about us being too hot and advised me to wear a piece of onion in my hair to stop me getting heat stroke.

We fell asleep in the afternoon with the door open because of the heat, and a monkey came in and took my dearly beloved tablet (the one I do everything on, I decided not to buy a Chromebook after all).  People from the rooftop cafe opposite saw it and a little boy retrieved it for me and came to our room with his father to return it.  (The tablet was in a zip up plastic toiletry type bag, apparently they take things like that in case it is food).  Our room was on the first floor, and the monkeys jump from roof to roof, I am so lucky that they didn’t drop it from a height and break it!)  I was half asleep and bewildered at the time but later, after we had visited the main temple again, this time at dusk and seen all the families there, sitting with tea and food and seen all the monkeys again, we returned home and I bumped into the boy’s father and was able to say a heartfelt thank you and give the boy and his sister a small present.

I did this by myself and then went to join my husband and stepson in the Old Chillout restaurant downstairs (which has lovely seating and lounging areas, great food, super friendly staff, and looks out over the boulders and banana palms), and just, sat…  I didn’t know at first what the feeling was, but it was so strong that after a while I took out my tablet and went on WordPress because otherwise I might have properly started crying.  That feeling, of course, was love.

20180417_044010

The next morning we left at 5.30am.  It was still dark and we drove past people waking up and starting their days, past carts pulled by oxen, past all kinds of temples and shrines, and watched dawn break, feeling the cool night air through the open sides of the rickshaw.  Magical.

We got the train back to Goa, an 8.5 hour journey in 2nd class ac, booked by the man who arranged our coach from Agonda to Hampi.  So far we have been doing things the easy way, later we’ll also use local buses and book trains ourselves at the station, but it is the man’s business and it was nice to support him.  The train was not quite as smart as the one from Delhi to Goa but perfectly comfortable and with a plentiful supply of people selling meals, snacks, coffee, water and sweets.  Although we had booked sleepers people were in our seats/beds and we didn’t have the heart to evict more than one person so we shared a sleeper seat for most of it, not really a problem as it was daytime (although I did go to sleep).

We arrived at Anjuna Beach, which was a bit too holiday maker-ish for us so we decided to find somewhere to move on to.  The next morning we got up early and went to look at Little Vagator.  We didn’t really like that either and so ended up staying in Anjuna one more night whilst we decided where to go next.  Arriving in Anjuna and Little Vagator after being in Hampi was like being pulled out of heaven.  Also, we had experienced probably the best beach in Goa already and been spoilt:  Agonda, with its tasteful beach side restaurants and bars, and beach huts, all of which are situated behind or level with the treeline so as not to spoil the beach.  Whilst of course touristy, it was so perfectly done, and the beach so clean, peaceful and big I don’t suppose anywhere will compete with that.

But it is about the experience, after all, and it was fun, getting up really early to beat the heat and going off to get to Little Vagator, with nowhere open and no rickshaws around.  We met two local guys who shared their cigarettes and drinks with us and persuaded an off duty rickshaw driver to take us, and invited us out to party with them.  That evening we did what you do in Anjuna, which I found quite scary, down the backstreets in the dark, into a house with one, two, then three men appearing.  Back to the guesthouse in a taxi to get cards and go to the ATM, having declined the offer of my husband getting a lift on the back of one of their mopeds and me staying in the house with one of the men and being made tea.  We wouldn’t have done that in England, in fact I am sure that here it would have been fine, but if anything had happened we’d have looked like idiots for taking that risk.  But they were all lovely, everything was fine, and now we can have another experience…

Happy Hampi

16 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by Rachel in Hampi, India, Personal growth, Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Building an author platform, Hampi, India, India sleeper coach, Personal growth, Travel, writing

20180416_034403

On Saturday night we got a sleeper coach to Hampi.  The sleeper compartments were very cosy and I was excited to be on the coach.  The air con was turned up so high that we were actually cold in the night.  We tried to relish this feeling though, aware that Hampi temperatures were 40°C and higher.  We stopped at around midnight for toilets, and food for people who wanted it (we avoided eating or drinking, no toilets on coach) then it was straight through until around seven am.  We took a Valium and slept for a few hours, waking up desperate for a pee, luckily the bus driver seemed okay with stopping at the side of the road for us.  Twice in the night (friendly) police came on to check for alcohol, as we had crossed from Goa into Karnataka which is a dry state.

Arriving at Hampi sleep deprived and with stomach cramps from having shut down our bodies for the trip, we were met with a big crowd offering us rickshaws to our guesthouse.  We declined and went off to find food; we met a local person who took us to his cafe and told us that we were staying on the other side of the river so would need to move back for the last night as the ferry doesn’t start early enough for us to catch our train out.  He showed us that we could walk to the ferry and walk from the other side to our guesthouse, plus he had rooms for the last night.

At the river the temple elephant was being given a ceremonial bath, this happens every morning.  It’s not just the temples in Hampi that are amazing, it’s also the river, the boulders, the landscape.  Our guesthouse is lovely, with a cool shaded veranda outside the rooms, complete with three cute kittens, and monkeys in the trees that come onto the patio and have to be shooed away.

Today we got up early and crossed over the river to look at the temples, the ruins and the huge boulders, and the many, many monkeys.  By about eleven it was almost too hot to walk on the stone floors barefoot.

20180416_034807

20180416_041223

Warning:  Shameless self promotion section

During my flurry of activity before I left, I emailed Hay House (publishers) and asked if they might be interested in my story.  A few days ago I got an email back.  A real, personal email.  They are closed to submissions right now whilst they review the ones they have.  The person who wrote me the email suggested I submit a proposal when submissions reopen on 4th June.  They provided a link to their guidelines and some specific things for me to consider.

One of them dear reader, is my ‘author platform’, which is why I need to start making an effort to build this.  This is why I have been messaging my friends and asking them to follow the blog.  Thank you so much those of you who have done this!  If you follow me, it means you can ‘like’ posts, make comments and most of all, I will know you are reading, or at least might be reading, whereas if you don’t follow the blog I will have no idea.  (This also helps for not repeating myself in messages/emails!)

It is very nice to get new followers, to have people ‘like’ my posts and to see that my posts have been read.  It’s also great to engage with people in the comments section.  I hope that friends will get to know me better, and that I will continue to make new connections with people I don’t know already.

Up until now, its really just been about expressing myself and making connections.  That still stands, of course, but Hay House will look at how many followers I have, views and engagement, or so I imagine.  So if you read the blog regularly and enjoy it, please consider following me.  If there’s anyone you know that you think may like it, please tell them or share on social media!

How to follow me:  On WordPress, in the bottom right hand corner will be a little follow button, it tends to fade in and out or appear and disappear, but when it appears, click on it.  You will then be prompted to enter your email address, you’ll get an email that you’ll need to confirm and then all new posts will go straight to your inbox.

Thank you for reading!

Instagram followingthebrownrabbit

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • May 2022
  • December 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • August 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • January 2016
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014

Categories

  • ageing
  • aging
  • angels
  • Art
  • awareness
  • Blogging
  • buddhism
  • Cambodia
  • Celebrating others
  • childhood
  • Christmas
  • creativity
    • Yoga
  • De-cluttering
  • death
  • December 2018
  • Decluttering
  • Delhi
  • dreams
  • erotica
  • escape the matrix
  • family
  • Feminism
  • getting older
  • Hampi
  • happiness
  • How to write a blog
  • India
  • India blogs November 2018 onwards
  • Inspiration
  • karezza
  • Liebster Award
  • Life update
  • Marrakech
  • Marrakesh
  • memories
  • Menstruation
  • mental health
  • middle age
  • Minimalism
  • Narrowboat
  • Nepal
  • Periods
  • Personal growth
  • Pushkar
  • reality
  • relationships
  • sex
  • spirituality
  • stress
  • suicide
  • sunshine blogger award
  • Tattoos
  • Thailand
  • The matrix
  • therapy
  • Throwback Thursday
  • Tokyo
  • Travel
  • Travel update
  • Tuk Tuks
  • Uncategorized
  • Varanasi
  • veganism
  • Vietnam
  • Voluntary simplicity
  • Work
  • writing
  • Writing inspiration

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Rachel
    • Join 786 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Rachel
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...