Over boulder and under boulder

Ah! The skin on my fingers is torn off, my toes are cramped, my elbows are scraped, my shoe-tying muscles will be sore for days. We've been bouldering!

Nice technical route up the arrête

I've hardly bouldered for half a year and I really missed it. Alex is pretty out of it too, so we didn't do any crazy stuff, just hung around on the amazing rocks for a day. The landscape around Hampi is simply stunning: huge granite boulders are scattered everywhere, fascinatingly random and asymmetrical. And the rocks themselves are incredibly cool for climbing, with a curvy outer layer many places offering great hand and foot holds. We rented shoes, chalk and a crash pad for the whole day, and got a good session both in the morning and the afternoon. In the middle of the day it's too hot here to do much at all (around 30°C), so we had lunch and gave our fingers a rest over a delightful game of chess and a cup of masala chai. We met lots of other climbers, who generally are super friendly people, and they showed us some nice routes and let us take some pictures from their guide book.

Over boulder

Under boulder

Despite the amazing bouldering, Hampi is most famous for its Hindu temples, and is a World Heritage Site. The most impressive temple is directly above the touristy little town Hampi Bazaar, but dozens of others are all around the area, too many to cover. Yesterday morning we went to the ghats to see Lakshmi, the temple elephant, have his morning bath, and he patted us on the head for a 10 rupee bill. Watching such a huge animal wobbling down all those stairs, something it clearly isn't designed for, was maybe the most fascinating part! Later in the day we visited some other temples a little ways down the river, before meeting up with our friends from Palolem. It was great to see them again, and it seems our schedules contain one day of overlap in Mumbai as well. All these reunions are fun!

Bright light as Lakshmi "kisses" me.

Tourists could pay to join the scrubbing.

We also took a short walk and rickshaw trip out to a spot upstream that we'd heard rumours about: A beautiful area where the river had been carving out dramatic formations in the bedrock, with wonderful pools to swim and jump in. Also an incredible place to hang out for an afternoon. We'll miss this when our trip takes us in to the big, chaotic cities. This morning we've had a rickshaw-tour of some of the temples, and now we continue to the mighty Mumbai! Good bye for now Hampi, it's been great!

Pictures do a pathetic job at conveying how awesome this place was.