The road ahead… 28.01.08

Ready to go, I was up in a hurry this morning. My body was already on a journey, and my mind had troubles following.. or maybe it was the other way around? Finally we, myself, David from Niva, Umesh, Avi, and Harish, where on our way to Hospet, in the Bellary district. The journey was estimated at 6 hours, but ended up being more like 8.5. The last 8 km was spent in a queue full of lorries with iron for the 2008 Olympics in China. Apparently this region has delivered minerals for the last year and half. It must have been 100 -200 lorries in both of the directions, and there was police officers with large sticks who had a go at the lorries breaking the queuing system. There were plenty of those, so we had several moments with yelling, smashing of mirrors and bulking the lorry doors – it was wild times and the frustration of the officers seeped easily into our cars as you could tell they felt it was the only thing left to do.

Finally reaching the hotel (I thought we would all sleep in a shared room, me under my mosquito netting in one corner and the boys in the other corner, but no…) We, my boss and I, were put in a five stars hotel, whilst the boys went off to another place. There was no more of the single rooms available, although that was what we had ordered, so I got the Honeymoon suite!!! I have to say, this was not at all what I expected –see the pictures and I guess you see where I am coming from. I spent a long time accepting this and so did my boss. We both were extremely baffled, and agreed to tell the boys that we did not want this extreme type of differentiation from now on. I then agreed that, lets have one night sleeping comfortably and getting some good rest. In bed at 2430, under five layers of blankets (I turned of all the AC, but still it was freezing) and dozed off probably around 0100. Then at 0130 I woke up panicking as it sounded just like two bombs had gone off … Then I heard the most intense drumming, screaming and bustle from the street –so there was a festival on… I am light sleeper so this was not my cup of tea –I wanted so badly my beauty sleep. After 30 minutes it died off, and I wet into sound sleep. Guess what woke me up at 0600 this morning? Those bombing sounds again and intensive drumming… hm.. The shower was nice and now I am of to breakfast. Wonder what Hampi is like?

Klem Mai