I begin with a poem:

What is the right way to chase salvation?
Does it want to be stalked
Like me waiting and washing my hands slowly
So that I can ‘casually’ meet a girl emerging
From the tiolet?

Or do I wash slowly without intention
Absorbed by the birds, trees, sounds around
Me, looking at the horizon full of rocks,
Planning to caress my next victim,
But greet the girl warmly when she comes?

After sucessive misses with the trains of Margao I have waited long enough to catch the twice-weekly direct Amaravati Express to Hospet – 3-tier AC unnecessary, this train suitably empty to lay down in the Jungle Car (the lowest seating class with no guaranteed seat). Hospet is at first a shock to the senses with its shouting touts and begging kids.

Entering Hampi itself I felt like I was 11 and entering Disneyworld for the first time. Its boulders were big, the little tourism-engorged village vibrant to scale, low tourist season and so the temple puja business is the primary source of income. A man asks me to take a photo with his friend and in the dark I stand there at arms length from the other man clasping hands and proudly smiling for the camera.

Met a Dutch girl named Mareike and at 5:30 AM the next day we went to the hilltop temple climbing over walls and rocks, missing the sunrise but finding the way and really being brave this early in the day. We wandered among the ruins together once day, the next day (I lost my keys and a 100 rupee note while climbing in the rocks) and the next day we met an English girl and went across the river in a round boat near where the temple Elephant bathes, visited the wonderfully charming Polish couple Marceau and Joanna in their hut, walked along the road to the Hanuman hilltop and drank in the view. Mareike has discovered that I distrust Rhesus monkeys and she equates that with me beleiving that they wish us har,. The English girl has a boyfreind so I tried to stop musing on her (increaingly I realized) fittish form.

My first day here the grumpy Swamiji who sits in our hotel; hates people; and walked 80,000 Kilometers around India shared his wisdom with me:


1) All gurus who do anything for money are scammers who have gotten nowhere with their practice and just love money.

2) You have both man and woman and food and the answer to all desires inside you – do not look outside: any satisfaction you find there (outside) is impermanent, fleeting.
   The real and lasting satisfaction is only inside.

3) Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad he loves, but all who followed them lost it. Follow yourself.

4) People wander from here to there in search of what is good, someone tells you of Hampi, you go there saying to yourself all the while “Hampi, Hampi, Hampi” then arrive
   “aaah Hampi, Hampi is good, good Hampi” then someone says “Bombay is good” then you pick up again “oh Bombay, Bombay, Bombay, Bombay, aaah Bombay etc.”
   Is not everything you need right here? Search for happiness inside – why wander? (he should know)

There are big black-faced langurs (a kind of monkey), yellow rumps who sit cross-legged on the wall and chat, their proportions human, their face a devine mystery. The people here are gentle and likable as they pester you for a sale. They are more beautiful than other people and there are many mirror-clad Gypsies among them. Their hamlets are small and beautiful, buffalo corrals among the boulders.