Tadipatri to Hospet
December 16th 1995
I wasn't feeling my best that morning and didn't bother going to look at the temple with Jenny. I didn't like temples any more than i liked churches and looking at them both just filled me with disgust at the exploitation, repression and spiritual imprisonment that all religions existed solely to propagate.
When i got up a bit later and had a look out at the town i wasn't at all impressed. Country towns are generally not much fun anywhere in the world and this one looked worse than most. I didn't really want to be there. The place was making me edgy for some reason. It wasn't just the dust and the noise and the fact that everybody stared at you as if they just watched you land in a martian space ship. I didn't know what it was and i didn't care, i just wanted to get out.
Jenny came back before ten and she didn't want to hang around either. There was a train due at twenty to eleven and then nothing till eight o'clock that evening, so we quickly got our stuff together and headed for the station - in an auto-rickshaw this time.
The train eventually came at about half past one - two hours after it was due. The journey took about two and a half hours and it wasn't a particularly pleasant one - mainly because of the over-insistent friendliness of a slightly drunk man sitting opposite us. It was alright at first - i was quite happy to talk to people on trains - but he was boring and went on and on. Then he started insisting that when we got off the train in Guntakal we went to his house to eat. We didn't want to because we just wanted to get to where we were going and not drag out the journey any more than we had to. But he went on and on, insisting, until his hospitality turned into a really annoying form of harrassment. Fortunately he eventually lay down and went to sleep. When he woke up, he invited us to his house again, but this time we said a very firm "no" and he finally let it drop.
The train from Guntakal to Hospet, which is the nearest town to Hampi, was due to leave some time after eight in the evening and arrive at midnight. That's not a very good time to arrive in a town you don't know and start trying to find a hotel, so we went to the bus station to catch a bus there instead.
Guntakal bus station came as a kind of last straw for me. I hadn't been having a particularly good day, and trying to find a bus to Hospet was a real pain in the arse. It actually wasn't that bad, looking back on it afterwards, but in my state of mind at the time it was a real full-on nightmare.
Apart from the strain of all the travelling we'd done since leaving Madras - which was hard enough on its own, i was beginning to suffer from the same problem we'd had in Indonesia, where we were public property and everybody was hassling us - in a friendly way. There had been a lot of people staring at me, talking to or at me, asking me questions - where are you from? what is your name? - crowding round me just to stare for half an hour or so, or whatever. It wasn't too bad occasionally and for a short while, but after a longish period of it, i'd begin to start going a bit crazy. Everybody at Guntakal station was staring at us the whole time we were there, as if we'd just landed from Mars. And on at least two occasions, a whole crowd of people gathered round us just to stare for a while. And of course, when a few people are standing staring at something, more and more join them just to see what's going on.
If i'd been able to speak Telugu it would have been different, i could have told them to piss off. But when you don't know a word of their language and they don't speak yours, it's quite impossible to do anything about it. Any attempt at communication you make just adds to the circus and draws more people into the crowd.
Added to this was the difficulty of finding out which bus was going to Hospet - or even finding out if any buses went direct there from Guntakal. Hindi script i could just about handle, but Telugu, the language of Andhra Pradesh, was just so many squiggles to me. Even Tamil, which i was a little more familiar with, was a total mystery so far, although i was trying to start learning it.
However, a lot of people were being helpful - although they didn't all tell us the same things. And there was a kid selling popcorn who spoke good English and was keen to help us all he could. In the end, after at least an hour there, a bus came in that was going direct to Hospet and the kids helped us get a seat. One little one, who was selling something that looked like coconut ice, got into the bus somehow and captured a couple of seats for us. I gave him five rupees in return for this invaluable service.
The road between guntakal and Hospet was terrible. I couldn't see much of it, but if it wasn't a dirt track all the way, it certainly felt like it was. We went over the scariest bridge i've ever crossed - it was really long, about fifty foot up in the air and just wide enough for a bus. It also had a surface that was at least as bad as the road that came before and after it. The bus suspension was buggered and every few yards it hit a hole or something and jumped and lurched about in a really disturbing way. Fortunately it was going very slowly. Unfortunately i was sitting next to the window, but i tried not to look out - and down - too much as it scared the shit out of me. Eventually, after what seemed like hours, but probably wasn't, we got to the other side. I decided to make sure i never had any cause to cross that bridge again!
It was a three or four hour trip to Hospet and i was very glad to get out of that bus at the end of it. We checked out a couple of hotels, but they were full up and we ended up at one called the Malligi Tourist Home. This was a big, posh-looking hotel, with a sort of tourist complex around it - two restaurants and an artefact shop of some sort. We asked about rooms, but all they had was an air-conditioned double, which was going to cost us nearly four hundred rupees - eight times as much as we'd paid the previous night in Tadipatri. However, mainly because we'd had a bad day and were exhausted, and partly because it would be novel to spend a night in an expensive room - once - we took it. But only after making sure the air conditioning could be turned off and the windows opened.
It was horrific. There was carpet on the floor - which is an incredibly stupid form of lunacy in the tropics - there was an empty fridge and a television and the place was decorated in tacky british curry house style. The worst thing was it had a sit-down toilet. The thought of staying in such a hideous environment disgusted me a bit, but it was an interesting insight into how rich fools live - although not one i wanted to repeat any more than i wanted to go over that bridge again!