Hampi: man skirts, midgits, goddesses, climbing things and so much more...

Here are some highlights from

our trip into India (from India's Tibet :)

and the monkey kingdom in Hampi.

Chillin on the streets of Mysore, waiting for our evening trains...

notice Beau's guitar thing, it's a Dramyin (Tibetan instrument).

He dragged it from Bylakuppe to Hampi, and often slept with his head rested on it like this.

This was a source of CONSTANT inquiry by everyone we saw.

They all wanted to know what it was, hear him play it, try it out for themselves.

 Beau made a lot of friends on our trip.

Lesson learned: if you ever need help meeting people in India, carry around a dramyin.

First stop: Breakfast! Uhhh...yeah, we had ice cream for breakfast.

Vacation, vacation vacation.

And for lunch Britney and pizza reunite for the first time

in almost three months, mmmmm cheese, oh how I love thee.

Since we had time to kill before the night train we had some henna done. The men who did 

it were amazing artists, and fast, unlike how long it takes for that stuff to dry and set. We watched a Hindi film in the cushiest, soft carpeted, reclining chaired theater ever while we waited for it to dry.

Here's a small, and not the best, sampling of the results at their darkest.

You miss the intricacies in this photo but just take my word for it for now.

This is me pretending like I was actually going to get some of that book read during our trip. I maybe read thirty pages, the rest of the book was read in haste after our return.

Dreaded papers on the two books = written and sent in just yesterday (sigh of relief).

These were our beds for two of the nights of the trip, train beds.

Small tidbit, if you use the restroom on a train in India, at least these ones, the

hole goes straight down to the train tracks -don't walk on Indian train tracks! - 

Between twenty hours on trains I somehow accomplished only needing to do this once.

 

Lori and Beau's beds. Separated at last!

Hahaha, just kidding.

These men are sporting the Indian male skirt that has a name I don't want to look

up right now, but they inspired Beau enough that he bought a few

and wore them the last couple days of our trip. A few epic pictures of this to come.

 

The top of the climb to the Hanuman (monkey) temple!

Feeding the monkeys.

Here's the scene: Britany, the temple goddess, has locked Beau up for the crime of

chocolate stealing from the royal stock, or something like that, and is advising with Lori, her

master jester, about what best to do with him.

Meanwhile Britney L., the non goddess, is off climbing up ancient temples or something and

should be the actual one locked up in bars. (See final photo of this post).

Like that, how I keep you going with promises of Beau in skirts and me climbing things? Yeah.

Beau, a.k.a "The Queen of Lithuania," and his three midgets. 

It doesn't help that he's on the high ground.

Lucky Beau, traveling across India with the three most beautiful women in the world!

People really like getting their picture taken with us. This was our second group at this location.

We have a collection of photos from our entire stay in India of us with groups or individuals that asked for our picture, I thought they would be kind of funny all on a blog post of their own.

Every tourist attraction we've gone to see has brought groups of Indians our way asking for

our picture. I decided that means we're just as cool as all the tourist sites, score!

This is a semi good picture of the elephant stables in the ancient royal court.

Elephant stables! Imagine horse stables...now, more massive.

Can you imagine it? Elephants everywhere just like horses, I want to see this kingdom at its prime.

King (queen) Cobra Goddess? Cobras?! Oh my, why haven't I been

more scared out of my mind while in India, I forgot about cobras!

Brit took it upon herself to fix all the broken statues.

Hiking up the mountain.

Laughing hysterically on top of the mountain.

Beau being epic in his "skirt" - glad you made it this far, huh?

Britany loved all the signs of the ancient temples also being used modernly for worship.

This was even on the very top of the mountain.

I also love going to the tops of the mountains to worship.

These guys thought they were really cool. Cool enough to get LOTS of money (any money?!)

for taking a picture with us. What they don't know is that we've let people take pictures with us

all day long now for three months - for free - so, no go guys, no go. Beau and Lori did give

them something for the magic show they provided after the photos.

And, me climbing. We did a lot of climbing, climbing mountains, climbing up onto our train beds and me climbing up everything. I made it to the top of this thing, well not this one but a similar one that felt slightly less like a temple and thus slightly less...wrong? I'm sorry if anyone is offended that I climbed on some things. 

Hampi is actually known for its rock climbing and after seeing the place you know why. All the stone temples and carvings also make sense, they have a grand land of stone there in Hampi and it pains me as a rock climber that I didn't do some actual rock climbing while there, so I guess I can be glad  at least for this fabulous picture and I'll end this post with that. 

We had a lot of other good times my photo uploading doesn't allow for. We had a temple elephant bless us and all the photos from that are great, many more monkey pictures and some really great statues etc. If you go to my side bar and click on "Beau's Blerg," he has a few more pictures from our trip posted that I do not. Two weeks from today and our time in India is over. I may post one or two more times, a few things I've been thinking about, but I may not and use, instead, all my hours to thoroughly enjoy my time with the wonderful people here. Until next time.