Goa and Hampi in a Few Words

- We left Goa, took an overnight bus to Hampi, and stayed there for two days.

- We left Hampi, took a car to Mysore.

- We spent 3 nights in Mysore

- We arrived in Kerala after a car, a plane, and another car. 

A lot of things for 11 days!

So I'm going to summarize, really quickly, parts one and two… if I can summarize.

Goa

After the excitement of Agra, when we saw a ton of monuments in two days (it's exhausting, I tell you), we relaxed in Goa for nearly two weeks. By the end of the first week, perhaps even before three days were up, Dad was bored. He was jumpy. He wanted to see things. Ioan was almost as jumpy. We girls, however, merely wanted to stay in the air conditioned and TV-accessible house, which, we thought, was ten times nicer than spending an hour in a stifling hot bus to get to a sandy beach with lots of people on it.

The beaches were a bit crowded, and they were quite sandy, but everything else made up for that. The waves, for one, and the temperature of the water.

In Goa I finished the books I bought in Nepal and bought two others, neither of which have been read yet.

We also watched more movies than can be healthy, but since we missed TV, that can be understood.

It was, to be honest, like a vacation at home. We spent Christmas in the pool. Outdoors.

Speaking of the pool, anyone who knows me around large bodies of water knows that it often takes me five minutes to get into the pool. I don't like cold. Even if I know that all I have to do is get my head under water… it's always too cold to actually do that. But, by the end of Goa, I'd step down into the pool within thirty seconds, all the way up to my chest (usually I stop at about thighs to shiver a bit), and within another fifteen seconds I'd be under water. Please note that the water was not the warmest.

Hampi

Hampi is a… village, I suppose, within walking distance of what seems like a billion temples from the 14^th and 15^th century.

Within perhaps half an hour, you can reach everywhere by bike, tuk-tuk, or foot. On hot days, however, I recommend the tuk-tuk— you get a much-needed breeze directly in the face.

While in Hampi, I got to go up on camera and express what I thought about Hampi. Dad filmed me talking to this film crew, with Ileana and Ioan standing by looking uneasy, while I tried to carry a conversation.

I sounded, to put it nicely, like a guide book. Or an ad. One memorable phrase is, "It's just not like anywhere else."

And it's hard to explain, too— Hampi has so many carvings in stone, so many buildings, so many temples that it's hard to explain exactly what you see… even the kitchens have columns engraved with lions and horses and elephants.

One of the most lovely things about Hampi, by the way, were the carved elephants, fighting, walking, running, playing…