City of Lost Children

It was a sad day to leave Hampi, our beautiful boulder-strewn Hampi... definitely the most naturally stunning place I have been to so far in India and definitely up there in the most stunning ever. I say our beautiful Hampi in relation to the little group Mark and I picked up on the train to Hampi, Louise and Xavier. Louise, who is currently sitting below me as I write this email form the gayest train this side of Gaysville (more later) is a lovely Irish girl from Cork and Xavier a cool french guy from Paris. We hung out together over our time in Hampi and I would say each grew equally attached to the place. It was a shame to split up the group, but split up we did on Tuesday morning when myself and Louise left the safety of our little Mowgli Villas toy town huts and the comfort of Babylon (a gazebo over which each of our huts overlooked and which catered to our every realxed need for the five evenings we spent in Hampi). We left for Badami, about three hours north of Hampi, home to some caves that I'd read about briefly in the guidebook.

We got to the bus station at 7.30am and I have to say I was slightly apprehensive of my first Indian bus journey... I had images of seven hours delays and impossible crushes, incomprehensible timetables, elbows to the face, neck and groin, babies with razor blades cutting holes in my bag to reach it's contents before their older brothers stole the bag... images of chickens and spit covered chairs and an old man sitting on my knee. Not for the first time, my ignorant and perhaps prejudice expectations of things in India were gently dissolved. The bus station was relatively quiet, the staff helpful, the bus pretty empty, clean and free from thieving-child. So I put my ipod onto shuffle and gazed out of the window to the sound of Ray Charles 'What'd I Say' and let it happen. I am looking forward to more bus journeys... bus journeys and odd songs, not songs odd by their nature just songs odd to their environment of bus rides through rural India (that is effectively every song on my ipod). It has made the ten or so hours of buses I have take over the past couple of days pretty interesting, and at times odd... listening to There is a Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths minutes before you pass the aftermath of a fatal collision between a car and coach for example.

Anyhows, after that little cheery note. We reached Badami without a hitch... a dusty little town with overpriced hotels with dusty rooms... a dusty little town with some beautiful caves cut out of the rocks that loom above. There are four caves in all and all were beautiful... full of stunning carvings and statues and bats, I have put some of the photos on Flickr, unfortunately (or fortunately) most of the photos I took were of the children... so many dusty children in this dusty little town. The first few that hit us were normal... but we slowly realised (that is the dusty dogs barking like at us, the only fair-skinned people around, made us realise) that not too many western tourists make their way to Badami... a shame as it is really pretty (a little bit dusty though). So kids 1-5 were nothing out of the ordinary... but they began to outnumber the adults by 3 to 1... all curious, all big fans of the camera, all heart-meltingly sweet (that said I did begin to worry at times that they were going to herd me and Louise into a corner and stone us to death for our heart-melting sweet money - where does that come from huh?!). Anyhows, as you can see from the photos we met one or two kids in Badami and they will likely live in the memory longer than the caves... odd that.

And now as ever, I hint at something early on (remember the gay train?!) and then write for too long and leave myself having to rush the end. So Louise, recovering from some mild food poisioning from a Thali the night before, and I set off for Mysore from Hubli (near Badami) early the next day... we were on the train when I began to notice something a bit odd... slightly bouncier steps in the youths, slightly rosier cheeks, slightly more roving hands when I walked by in the corridor. Yes, you guessed it, I had found myself on the Tranny Train... and you think I'm joking!? For some reason 42 gays (as they introduced themselves) were on a fun week trip from Mumbai to Mysore... they were a funny old group, flamboyant in a way I think any new community has to be to survive in what must be a hostile culture as this... but all lovely if a little too touchy feely. Unfortunately their English and my Marathi wasn't good enough to really get into too much of a conversation about things, but it was fascinating to observe them, and perhaps more so the happy and friendly reactions of their fellow (albeit all middle-class) train passengers... not every day.

And so I will leave you... in Mysore, a city I am not so keen to return to and even less keen to write about... till the next interesting happening.