We reached Hospet and then Hampi on Saturday morning and got a room in Ranjana Guest House in Hampi Bazaar. Its recommended by Lonely Planet and served us some excellent breakfast and snacks during the time we stayed there. If you are not looking for luxury, its a pretty good option.

I had already researched all the places we could cover in two days and we had a rough itinerary in mind. Also, we had detailed maps and information on all the places so we didn’t need a guide. (Thanks to Hampi.in and Indiamike!)

We kicked-off our tour of the Sacred centre with Virupaksha Temple, the largest temple in Hampi. Right from the start, both of us were enamoured by Hampi. The terrain, the rocks, the architecture – everything was fascinating.

We continued to Hemakuta hills, Sasivekalu Ganesha, Krishna Temple, Narsimha and Monolithic Shivalinga. The heat started getting bad as noon time approached. It was lunchtime and we decided to check out Mango Tree, a restaurant located on the Tungabhadra riverside, which I had read a lot about. And the place did not disappoint! We gulped down glasses of mango shake one after another and decided to make it our official hangout place after every round of sightseeing.

After a relaxing lunch, we decided to cover the riverside ruins next. The stretch begins from the end of Hampi Bazaar where a large Monolithic bull is placed. The heat was starting to get a little too much and there were almost no people in sight but our zeal to see more kept us going. In fact, we were the only tourists for quite some time at Achyut Raya Temple and Courtesans’ street.

The stretch till Vittala Temple was probably the most dry and difficult. We tried drinking all sorts of liquids to keep us cool and even had a sundae. We passed King’s Balance to get to Vittala Temple and got to see the most popular of Hampi, the stone chariot. We spent around 1 hour in Vittala Temple complex resting happily after successfully completing the day’s itinerary with some time to spare. On our way back, we made a short stop at Sugreeva’s cave and then headed back to our room.

For a small town, Hampi has a vibrant night life. There are numerous roof-top cafes and restaurants and loads of shops selling anything and everything. We did a tour of the whole market and bought ourselves a t-shirt with motif each. For dinner, however, we decided to go back to Mango Tree. After dinner, we came back home and went to sleep after a long tiresome day.

On the second day, we started early and took a coracle to the other side of the river.

We then trekked to the top of Anjaneya Hill. This is supposed to be the birth place of Lord Hanuman and the view from the top was more than worth the effort.

Afterwards, we went back and checked out of the room. For the remaining part of sightseeing, we decided to rent bicycles. We rode to the Royal Centre area and kicked-off our tour with Underground Shiv Temple, Mahanavmi Dibba and Hazara Rama Temple. The sites that included Watch Tower, Mosque, Krishnadeva Raya’s palace etc. looked more like an excavation site.

We also saw some tempting baths and tanks with little or no of water. We finished the leg with Lotus Mahal, Elephant Stables and Queen’s bath.

We then rode to Kamalapur to visit the archaeological museum and then concluded our trip with a well-deserved delayed lunch at Mango Tree. After spending an hour or so there, we returned to Hospet to catch our train back to Bangalore.

On the whole, it was an amazing trip! Hampi is a small but bustling town with friendly people who are not after your money. Its a trip I would recommend to everyone. After all, how often does a place offer historical, adventurous and religious sights together and gives you a chance to show off your well-earned tan with pride!

These and a lot of other photos from my Hampi trip are available at flickr here.

• So my trip to Lucknow on Diwali went well. I spent 2 days in Delhi and just 9 days at home. Diwali night was fun though a little too windy. I took lots of photos out of which 14 pictures are posted on flickr for all of you. Most of those are of Gurgaon (a city I visited for the first time and what a disappointment it was!)
• I also met some really old school friends back home, thanks to Orkut. For some reason, some of these friends felt really concerned about me because of my last post and suggested that I should obviously get married so that there’s someone to take care of me. The fact that I don’t want to get married anytime soon did not go down very well with them which is weird cos its one thing for such things to come from your parents but from your school friends? It’s totally weird!! And the best part is that my parents don’t even care about me getting married. Few relatives do but my dad knows how to get each and everyone of them to shut it. And my mom doesn’t encourage them as well. That’s why i love my parents! They are non-interfering. Just the kind i like.
• After the heavy rains last week, I finally decided to buy an umbrella. And know what – it hasn’t rained ever since!!
• And to end with some good news – if things go as planned, I will finally have my own personal laptop in a little over a week.

On Wednesday night, when the illness started, I employed my mp3 player to help me sleep and it worked for sometime. I was starting to feel really sad about the whole situation cos I was sick and all alone but Frou Frou helped me get over it by singing “There’s beauty in the breakdown” in my ear. And so at 3:15 am, I called up my landlady and asked for medicines.

I am much better now. The motivation for getting better, of course, is that I’m going to Lucknow tomorrow for Diwali. And its been a year since I went home. I last went on last Diwali. The difference this time would be that my parents now have broadband at home so I will keep posting and keep reading other blogs. In fact, I may be able to post more than I do now.

And even though I don’t write too many posts these days, its good to know once in a while that my blog can keep people occupied for hour(s) and even make them come back as is evident in screenshot 1, screenshot 2 and screenshot 3. (The third visit was longer than the screenshot). I think that’s enough reason to feel good about. What do you think?

Update: In a major offence, I forgot to tell you all about my new pictures from my trip to Nagarahole in which I saw crocodiles, elephants, dears, birds, a fox and a will boar. The pictures can be found on flickr, as always.

Update 2 This is a small clip from one of the funniest episodes of Family Guy. Take a look. It’s just too funny!! Watch it, please!

Our bus left for Paris on Friday night and I woke up to find myself in a new place. But Let me tell you what I thought of Paris before I continue. It’s fantastic! The best place I’ve ever been to! It’s artistic & beautiful, lively & colorful & yet modern & organized.

There’s just so much to see in Paris, it’s unbelievable. There’s art on every corner. So I obviously took 500 photos and videos. I would have taken more if my camera’S !GB memory card didn’t run out of space. I had to buy a Pro account on flickr to post the 218 better ones out of those. So please head over to Flickr and take a look. You must take a look at my pictures. You all owe me that much. I’ve put in hard work into it.

We went to lots of places and saw lots of things plus posting pictures from Flickr here is a pain so I would only show you few pictures here and for the rest, you will need to visit my flickr page and look for a set called “Paris”. I know I am being repetitive but you must do that.

And here are few pictures and their description:

Tour Montparnasse is the tallest skyscraper in Paris and we went up to the 56th floor for a fabulous view of Paris.

I took this from the top of Tour Montparnasse. The dome in the middle is St Peter’s Basilica of Les Invalides which houses the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Looking North West from Tour Montparnasse. Tour Eiffel and the La Défense skyline can be clearly seen.

It was cloudy and hence not the best day for taking pictures of Eiffel Tower. But I had to do it anyway. I took this one from Tracadero garden.

Looking North West towards Trocadero from the top of Eiffel Tower.

That’s Basilique du Sacré-Cœur on Montmarte. The sunlight was playing hide and seek and working as a natural limelight.

In the evening, we went for a very scenic boatride on the river Seine. I saw the sunset around 8:55 pm while on the boatride. (I really like this picture.) At the end of the boatrode, we saw the glittering Eiffel Tower.

And that’s L’Arc de Triomphe at night. We walked down from there through Avenue des Champs-Élysées like everyone who visits Paris is supposed to. We had diner at one of the restaurants there, saw the glittering Eiffel Tower from the obelisk one more time and then went back to the hotel.

Next morning, we went to Musée du Louvre and just like everything else, it was spectacular too.

The amount of art displayed here itself is overwhelming.

The Pyramid only adds to the beauty contrary to what few people suggest.

Two days is too small a time to see a city like Paris. But thats okay because I will definitely visit Paris again and with more time on my hand.

And finally, don’t forget to take a look at all my pictures.

I’ll let the pictures do the talking from now on.

We walked for 10 minutes through the streets and saw huge roman buildings and ruins.

It was amazing how there was so much to see in just a small compound.

The Colosseum was also conviniently located right next door. There were hundreds of people there and very few of them were Italians. Atleast 60% of tourists were Americans. There was a fairly large number of Indian tourists everywhere we went.

After having a pizza in one of the famous roman roadside restaurants, we headed towards the Spanish steps (the only place in our trip that I didn’t care much about) which were extremely crowded and then to the Vatican. Needless to say, The Vatican was truly amazing. The Piazza was huge. We tasted our first Gelati there as well.

Our last stop for the day was Trevi Fountain which was swarming with people. We managed to find a place near the fountain to throw the customary coin though.

Day two of our journey started with a train ride to Pisa. The whole track ran parallel to the beach and if you remember this post, this was the closest I’ve ever been to a beach.

Our first and only stop in Pisa was Piazza del Duomo because all the attractions are inside one walled area. Somebody must have thought of tourists while constructing these buildings. The only low point of my trip was when I got to know that we could only go up the Leaning Tower at 4.40 pm as only few people are allowed at a time and that wasn’t an option for us as we had a flight back to Frankfurt at 7pm from Florence.

The cathedral (Duomo) is spectacular on the inside but since it was dark, I couldn’t get too many great pictures out of it. Outside, hundreds of people kept taking pictures in the cliched pose and we went to the base of the leaning tower to atleast see it properly from the outside.

A 1 hour train journey took us to Florence but we didn’t have much time left to see the city properly. We just went aroud the station which is pretty close to the famous Duomo and quickly caught the shuttle to the airport. From whatever I saw in the 2 hours that I was there, Florence seemed like a really great place, very modern and clean and the only place in Italy I can imagine leading a normal life in. Others are just worth a short visit, in my opinion.

We soon got into a really small plane and left for Frankfurt. The view from the flight window was beautiful though. After an hour and a half, we reached Frankfurt and all of us felt relieved to be back home.

In the end, it was a really successful trip and I was doubly happy since I was the one who planned it and made all the arrangements.

I took a total of 338 pictures in 2 days out of which I’ve uploaded 85 on flickr. So if the pictures posted here look good to you, go take a look at my flickr page.

• My colleagues from India who are accompanying me have a tough time with the lunch served in the office even though vegetarisch (i.e. vegetarian) main course is served. But I like the food here and have totally no problem at all. So all of them complain about the food and all I can do is sit and sympathize with them even though I enjoy the food.

• We didn’t do much over the weekend. The only noteworthy place we visited was Heidelberg. It’s a beautiful city. It looks like a typical European city one sees on those postcards. Mannheim, my host city, on the other hand, is very modern. We basically just went to two of the biggest attractions in Heidelberg, the castle (Schloss) and the main street (HauptStrasse). The place was full with tourists even though all the shops were closed cos it was a Sunday (which seemed a little strange). I mean, why would they not want all the business from the tourists? I have uploaded lots of pictures of the place as well as few others of Mannheim (More pictures will come soon). So go take a look at my “Trip to Germany” set on flickr. There are some 50 photos right now.

The first pic you see right here are of the view of the city from the castle.

The second pic is of one of the walls of the castle.

• We passed through an area outside Mannheim called Kafertal Wald where there was a huge US army base. The place was full of Americans, American military vehicles and most of all, American flags. There was a Wal-Mart nearby as well. It was weird.

• The weather here right now is just like the weather in Bangalore. Complete with the wind and unexpected rains. So its very comfortable for me.

• As you might have noticed, I have picked up quite a few German words. Not sentences, just few common words and names of places. It can be helpful at times even though most people here do understand English. I haven’t faced any major language problem yet. Lets hope things stay that way.

This is the first time I’m visiting a foreign country but what’s weird is that I don’t feel like I’m in a foreign place at all. I feel like I feel when I visit any Indian city for the first time. This in spite of the fact that Germans are all around me. Is that weird or normal? Whatever!

I have seen quite a few new things here though. Graffiti being one of them, pin drop silence on the streets being another and most surprising of all, cars stopping for the pedestrians to cross the road. Plus it was a li’l difficult to adjust to the fact that it gets dark only after 9:30 pm.

I know this isn’t a long post but I wrote it using a German keyboard which, I tell you, is not easy to use.

Last Friday, we were told that we’d be leaving “towards” Mysore by train on Saturday afternoon. This was the first time I was going out of Bangalore by train so I was excited cos I love watching cities from a train. Plus trains are much more comfortable and enjoyable than buses.

But before all this, we all were sent a mail informing us that all of us had been divided into four teams and we all had to participate in a theme-based group dance event. So rehearsals began on Thursday. As you all probably know by now, I hate dancing but am open to choreographed dancing so I happily joined the rehearsals. Now, it sometimes bothers my colleagues (especially Lucio) and me that all of us are divided into teams every time we go out which makes everything competitive and takes the fun away but the truth is that I’ve been on three company outings so far and I’ve always had lots of fun. The reason lies in the fact that I’m extremely over competitive and had it not been for the sake of winning an event, I would have never even talked to half the people on the trip. So I kind of, secretly, like it.

So anyhow, we even had to come early on Saturday for the dance rehearsals. I had to dance on one Punjabi and one Kannada song. Ya, we were going for the clichéd ‘Unity in Diversity’ theme. The train journey was okay. We had one full coach to ourselves and Bangalore did not look too good from the train. Also, there was lots of noise pollution because of numerous people singing at the top of their voices and calling it playing Antakshari. We reached Mysore on time and were directed to exit the station though a side gate and then made to board a bus after some wait. Oh, and Mysore looked much better from the train.

The bus ride lasted for about 20 minutes and we soon found ourselves outside a water-cum-theme park. My first thought was “They brought us so far for this!” but since we were already there, I decided to let it go. The first event after we rested for 15 minutes was Treasure Hunt and since it was already dark and we were new to the place, it was difficult. Our team found five of the eight clues. After everybody was tired after running in the dark, we were told that e had to come back in 20 minutes for the dance competition. My team again did great. I forgot one step in the dance routine but since everybody used to follow me, they all did what I did and so a tragedy was averted.

After the dance competition, dinner and drinks were served and dance floor was thrown open for everyone. This meant that it was my turn to sit and watch all the drunken people make fools of themselves.

The next day in the morning, there was a tug of war in the pool. And guess what, my team won!! But before everyone woke up, Lucio and I went for a walk and I took two snaps with my phone cam. (Not having a digicam sucks!)

The first picture is of few birds sleeping on the pathway:

The second picture is of a fising scene from an embossed mural (if you know a better term, let me know) on the wall:

After that, everyone was free to try out all the slides. The most fun was to make a colleague go on a particular slide she was afraid of. Then we moved to wave pool and spent some time there. After that everyone was invited to the pool for free for all dancing and I thought that fun was over for me. But then something miraculous happened. One of the teams had hired a professional choreographer and then had brought her along on the trip so she was asked to stand out of the pool and give us some great steps and we just had to follow her. A godsend. So I danced to all the latest songs.

After all that, we ate lunch, went on the remaining rides and then we left for the station. We were booked on a passenger train this time and it stopped at almost every station. And then it stopped at a station for 45 minutes because of the supernatural house that Lucio wanted for himself. We finally reached Bangalore more than an hour late.

The aftereffects of the trip were that my body was badly aching on Monday and I am severely suntanned even now.

So what do you think of this “mystery” weekend outing. Not bad, huh?

Update: I forgot to tell you all that my team won the whole thing. We would soon be going out for a victory lunch.

If u were to see 5 countries (your home country excluded) and then never get to see anything else, which countries would these be?

For me, it would have to be:

1. France – Italy – Germany – Luxembourg – Greece (EU is almost one country, right?)
2. South Korea
3. Russia
4. Canada
5. Israel

I tag all my regular readers. No compulsion, as always.