The Hump to Hampi

It’s a post-sunset slow river in a Flintstone movie set from the 16th Century, huge tan boulders impossibly stacked, huge tan temples dirty, blending into the landscape. It’s Hampi. The last boat to our side of the river just came in, straggling tourists climbing up the last hill for the day. It’s quieter over here, away from the bazaar and the major temples. Something about a slow river makes everything around it a little slower, a little lazier. People take their cues from their surroundings.
We just arrived here after an odyssey. It shoulda been: one-hour bus, Gokarna to Kumta; wait 3 hours. Then 8-hour bus overnight, Kumta to Hospet. Get in at 8am and rickshaw it to Hampi. Instead, it went like this..
We scramble for the one-hour bus to Kumta; leaving an hour earlier than they told us yesterday. Catch it barely, ride to Kumta, then have four and a half hours to kill in the dirty little town. We find a dingy little backroom bar, and start in on the Kingfishers, the four of us, me and the three girls (Nooshin and Rebekah). Ceiling fans stirring the thick air, all the men in shock to see three women in their watering hole. We drink and drink and laugh and laugh till they boot us out at 10:30, then we wander down to whosever restaurant is open to eat something and drink some more. Quarter to 12 we decide we better head back to the bus stand, to be safe. There they tell us the bus won’t come until 12:30. So we settle in. 90% men, gawking at the three white girls who are too liquored to take it quietly and throw out a few good, Can I help yous??- a crazy beggar woman befriending Rebekah, a huge and injured German shepherd befriending Nooshin; I keep thinking how it’d be a lark to get my guitar out, but I don’t really want that much attention. Another big joint burns down. Stale urine on warm breezes, all eyes on us- I fucking hate bus stands. 12:30 comes; so does a bus- it’s not ours. Then another. And another. And still another. Katya’s pleading with the office man, Where is it?!One o’clock comes. And then finally so does our bus. We’d hoped for front seats, but we’re stuck in the middle again. Katya and I try to get comfortable on a 3-seater, but the bumps make your teeth chatter, and the driver takes the turns like he’s experimenting with bus wheelies. I’m getting the spins; too much drink, too much swerving. I’m so tired, and my eyes are closing slow like curtains, but backstage it’s all black spinning until I’m reeled awake again. Try to breathe. Eyes closing. Spinning. I fight like this for almost an hour. Then I get the telltale shot of hot saliva in the back of my mouth, and I slide the window open.. I’m really gonna join em- all those Indian school-buses I’ve seen with the long brown streaks beneath every window; I’ve always wondered what it’s like. I jut my head out into the rushing cold air as far as I can, watching for oncoming trucks. And then up comes fried gopti and rice and beer, spattering the speeding asphalt, the window beside me- I don’t want to think what the passenger behind me is seeing. I clench my teeth, and heave again. And again. Window splattered, my mark left on the night highway somewhere. I fall back into my seat and slide the window shut. Katya is snoring, she slept through the whole thing. I feel much better.
Sometime later we arrive at a stop and most of the bus disembarks- all four of us claim three-seaters for ourselves. By god, we are going to get sleep on an Indian bus! We start off again, but I soon realize that the driver is keeping his window wide open to stay awake, and the air is absolutely frigid. I’m still in my shorts and t-shirt from the beach, trying to fit every inch of me under a thin blanket, huddled down on the seats. But drafts find their way into every space between blanket and body. I can’t get to my pack till we stop again, so I steel myself and think warm thoughts, shivering for an hour.
Finally we stop, and I get the cosies on. We start off again and I manage to drift in and out for half an hour, but then the sun’s coming up, the same fuzzy peach I saw dip below the waves from a motorboat twelve hours ago on my way out of paradise. We must be getting close, so I just sit up and wait.
Pretty soon we pull into a bus stand- Is this Hospet? Hospet? Bustle, confusion- the bus clears. This must be it. But the conductor is saying something to Nooshin about switching buses… What?! This is not Hospet. Then someone else says there’s a traffic jam,
no-one’s going anywhere. But we can walk to the train station and reach Hospet from there. So we march.
Train tickets are cheap, and the wait’s only fifty minutes. We settle on a bench, all eyes on us, all beggars on us, dried puke only on me. After fifteen minutes people start clambering down off the platform and crossing the tracks to stand on the other side- there’s no other platform though. They tell us it’s where we have to stand for the Hospet train. So we struggle with our luggage down to the tracks, stepping over sun-baked human shit and other delicacies to bake ourselves in the morning sun, standing on the tracks for the train.
It finally comes. We settle in for half an hour and then grab a rickshaw into Hampi from Hospet, bedraggled and exhausted. But maybe it was all worth it.