Don't worry be Hampi

Last weekend myself and some of the interns went to Hampi. Hampi is a UNESCO world heritage site that is sprinkled with various ancient monuments and temples. The landscape and man made historic temples are beautiful; I have never seen anything like it. Below are some photos so you can get a glimpse:

This is the river that we had to take a boat across to get to our guest house. Locals are doing their laundry and bathing in it:

The rice fields across from our guest house

Our little cottages 

My friend Lindsey and I eating breakfast at the restaurant at our resort:

We hired a rickshaw driver to take us around the various historic sites. The following photos are from this:

The Hindu god Ganesh:

This is the royal stable for elephants:

The queen's bath:

The wall of a temple that has one thousand miniature carvings:

Us with the stone chariot:

On our way back to the village, we got incredibly lost. We ended up coming across a man offering to boat us down the river to get back. Hot and tired, we accepted only to find out that his idea of a boat was a man made little disc! This was a really funny experience; fitting five girls into a tiny little leaking boat that was paddled by two young boys. It was very enjoyable though because we got to flow through giant boulder hills that had various ancient carvings along them. It really did feel like we were in a completely foreign world. This was the boat:

I was so in love with the boulder-y landscape...we kept on saying it felt like we were in Jurassic Park!

A long hot day walking around ruins called for some fresh juice at The Mango Tree:

The next day we had a nice lazy morning of eating breakfast, drinking chai and writing in our journals:

Our second afternoon involved doing some more sightseeing, shopping in the bazaar and my friend and I got Ayurvedic oil massages (that cost only $9!)

Such a great trip!

Jungles and Palace

Our third weekend here we went on a planned trip to Madumalai national park, which has several protected wildlife parks and animal sanctuaries. This was a really nice trip. Despite having a bit of a flu bug, I really enjoyed the peace and quiet and cool breeze. It was also so nest to stay in tree houses, literally next to nature with wild emus and monkeys nearby. In this park there are tigers, and although we didn't see any, I felt like I was just in the middle of a Rudyard Kipling novel. Kipling's short story The Elephant Child that I read in grade 3 kept on coming back to me as we watched elephants and heard stories of giant pythons being around. 

Our tree house room:...Surprisingly it had running hot water!

 Me with the outside: 

The elephant sanctuary. We watched mahuts (elephant keepers) take their elephants for a bath. Apparently all of these elephants have been rescued from abandonment or unfair zoos and have been raised by their mahut. The mahut spends almost every hour with their elephant and even slept with them as they were babies.

I had some friends while reading in the hammock:

Yummy real South Indian breakfast from our resort:

On our last day in the jungle, we woke up at 5:30am to go on a jeep safari. We went so early because that increases the chances of seeing a tiger. Unfortunately we were unsuccessful but below are some photos of what we saw:

It was so nice to see mountains:

Later that day we left the national park and stopped in Mysore as it is along the way. Mysore is famous for its palace which gets lit up on Sunday evenings. We did a tour of the palace, which is where the maharajah lived for centuries. It had some beautiful features but unfortunately cameras were not allowed. I tried to sneak some photos with my phone but they are not the best. My favourite parts were the painted roof windows, which showed many animals - as well as the hand carved wooden doors inlaid with ivory. 

Cows crossing the palace grounds - not an unusual sighting in India. 

The Mysore market:

The palace all lit up: