Hannah and Jase's World Tour

Hannah and I are currently in Mysore, south Karnataka. Since our last email, we took an overnight sleeper bus from Palolem to Hampi, arriving in the morning of 12th Jan, where we stayed for 3 days and 2 nights. The journey took another 12 hours! Comfortable sleeper bus and we were paying for travel and accomodation in one, so ok. Hampi is about 150 km east of Palolem and in central Karnataka, a state that has a population of over 55 million - not far off the population of UK alone!

In Hampi we had an amazing 3 days of pure culture. Hampi is a small scared place where alcohol is forbidden and the landscape is totally covered and strewn with impressive large boulders balancing awkwardly on each other, making stonehenge look like child's play. Boulders everywhere, with numerous numerous scatterd hidden temples from the 16th century that are now obvioulsy not used but left for tourists and for monkeys to use as a playground. The temples and monuments everywhere is evidence that this once used to be the capital city of one of the largest hindu empires in indian history - fantastic - our photos will paint more than a 1000 words.

On our first full day (13th Jan) we had a fully tour with a guide, taking in the sights in the morning on foot and then on bikes in the afternoon, where we saw an elephant that seems to be used in daily blessing rituals in and around the Virupaksha temple.

Hampi was also full of tailor shops so Hannah and I got some light weight t-shirts made for us. It took the tailors about 3 hours to do about 4 garments and only cost about 250 rupees each (3 pounds)! So I have some nice t-shirts to wear. We spent our last day in Hampi (14th Jan) looking at all of the markets and eating lots of street food, as the stomach seems used to it all now!. The atmosphere was great as it seems that we have walked straight into another festival, the hindu new year! We saw a policeman race after cow that had nicked his bag of peanuts!

We then took an evening sleeper bus (another 12 hours) down to Bangalore and then another 3 hours the following morning to get to Mysore, south Karanataka, where we arrived early yesterday, 15th Jan. This is a great way to travel - costing about 10 pounds between us, you get a double bed cabin. Basically a normal bus with bunkbeds on either side of the aisle. The only way you can travel india is by sleeper bus/trains because of its size.

So far, Hannah and I have done the city, beaches and culture. We plan to stay in Mysore until tomorrow to do some more sighseeing (Maharaja's palace) and checkout some sandalwood markets, as this place is apparently famous for its sandalwood - try and find a sandalwood chess set. We will head further south into the state of Kerala and stop off at a wildlife sanctuary before heading further south to Kochin and do some sailing in the backwaters of Kerala on a houseboat, hopefully, before our flight from Kochin in Kerala to take us back to Mumbaion the 26th ready for our flight to Thailand on 28th.