I had the opportunity last week to take a little bit of time away from work to vacation and explore South India, specifically the states of Karnataka and Goa. I’ll break up the trip into three parts to make sure to not overload on one particular post. First stop, Bangalore!
BANGALORE
For those who don’t know, Bangalore is one of the major cities in India and may be one of the more Americanized parts of the country. It’s essentially the Silicon Valley of India — a new city with lots of tech-related jobs and startups and even similar weather to boot. Of course part of what comes with it is that Bangalore doesn’t quite have the same level of history that some of the other cities here do, but no matter because it’s a pretty awesome place as it is.
I met up with several other members of my FMS cohort there, and we got to share our experiences at our individual placements and catch up over drinks and food. I was surprised to see how many expats (specifically Americans) I ran into and quickly realized that I was leading a much more “Indian life” than some of my counterparts in other cities. We visited some nice spots for food and took a trip to Nandi Hills, which was a short drive away from the city and offered some great views.
A shot of a very Americanized bar in Bangalore. Could’ve sworn I was hanging out in SF…
The bull at Bull Temple on Nandi Hills. It was kind of tucked into the side of the mountain. Why must they make it so hard to get to the temples?
HAMPI
Next stop was Hampi, one of the ancient capitals of India. To get there, we ended up taking a sleeper bus, which as fun and cool as that sounds, wasn’t quite that comfortable when you’re in the back seat. Turns out there was a reason the back seats were the only ones left available.
Unassuming and unprepared for the 20 or so times I’d go airborne throughout the night due to the bumpy road.
Hampi is now mostly ruins, but I was told that it was a place you just had to see. It did not disappoint! As soon as we got off the auto rickshaw in Hampi, we were greeted by Laxshmi the Elephant, who gave each of us a blessing (i.e. wonked on he head) for the small price of 10 rupees.
We ended up staying at cute little place with hammocks, rented scooters to drive around the mountains, took a coracle ride (round half shell-like boat rowed by a local), and got to see some historical sites.
View from Hanuman Temple. The mountains around Hampi all have those weird boulder things going on.
Another temple
I actually have a bunch of other picture from Hampi I’ll upload in a bit as a separate post. Stay tuned!