Hampi Miscellany

And finally, a few miscellaneous pictures from Hampi.

First up are a couple pictures of the ruins. The first shot is my favorite temple at Hampi, of which I have many pictures. This one came out better than most though. The second is of the elephant stables in the royal enclosure. This was the first time I've seen them up-close in all my trips.



While we were in the royal enclosure we were accosted by this large group of young women who all wanted their picture taken.



And finally some pictures from Hampi bazaar itself.

Another view of India.

Here is an extensive writeup with lots of pictures from Thurman's recent visit to India. Definately worth the time to read.

Shanti guesthouse.

OK, so maybe the final bit of my last post should have read next couple weeks instead of days.

These pictures are all in and around Shanti guesthouse. Somehow on all my previous stays there I'd managed not to take any pictures of my Hampi home away from home.



These final shots show the area outside of the Shanti. You can just see the guesthouse itself off on the right in the second one.



That's it for now. One more Hampi post left to go.

Never seen this before.

Amazingly enough, considering I've now been to Hampi five times, there were still plenty of things I hadn't seen before. Here are a few pictures of some sights that were new to me on this most recent visit.

The flooded "underground temple" in the second shot was particularly cool. The temple isn't really underground, rather it's just located in a depression that was dug out of the ground. The flooding must have been accounted for in the design as there were channels cut in the floor that were clearly intended to carry water around the temple.



The temples in these other pictures are right outside the entrance to Hampi bazaar itself. I've walked by both of these before but somehow managed not to explore either of them.



I've got some more pictures to post. Rather than put them up all at once I'm going to break them into themes and post them over the next couple days. Maybe this will get me in the blogging mood again.

Stupid Rickshaw Tricks.

Just got back from a weekend in Hampi. Off to work in a couple minutes. Pictures later.

This morning on the way back from the train station I finally got into an Auto-Rickshaw fender-bender. No damage other than a rip in my pants and the trip home ended up costing less than it would have with the original predator driver. So it pretty much balanced out.

Happy birthday

Picture courtesy of ushistory.org

Street scenes.

I've been neglecting my blog lately. I have a bunch of pictures from around my neighborhood for a theme post I've been toying with however I don't have all the shots I need yet (and it might be a while before I'm done). In the meantime here are some random street shots from near my apartment.



Not much too report, other than that the rain has started. Looks like the monsoon is right around the corner. It has rained briefly almost every evening for the last week. And tonight it was absolutely pouring when I left work - I didn't think my auto-rickshaw was going to make it through the current a couple times on the way home.

Pictures from Mysore.

I finally got around to picking out some pictures from my trip to Mysore last weekend.

Rather than taking a bus or train to get to Mysore on Saturday we rented a car and driver which provided an opportunity to stop at some out-of-the-way sites on the way. The first stop at Shivanaputnam wasn't so great; the sites were over touristed and rather uninteresting. After we left there I convinced the driver to take us out of the way to see the temple at Somnapur which ended up being well worth the extra time and expense. In fact I'd have to place it as one of my 2 or 3 favorite of the numberless temples I've seen in India.



After Somnapur we went straight to Mysore, checked into a hotel, and sent the driver on his way. We relaxed for an hour or so then walked over to the train station to buy or tickets back for the next day. The finish to the day was a simply amazing meal at a restaurant I had thought was only so-so on my previous trip.

On Sunday we saw a couple sites in Mysore. We didn't go anywhere I hadn't visited before but it was nice to be back. All three of the remaining pictures are from the top of Chamundi hill. I was particularly glad to get a good shot of this ugly demon statue. When I was there in 2003 it was the afternoon and the sun was directly behind his head.



For a while we were the center of attention (see the first picture below). This group of Indian tourists were visiting from Gulbarga and wanted to have their pictures taken with us. In addition to a few group shots, every one of them had to have individual pictures taken with us. I've seen this kind of thing before although not on this scale and never with the women in the group taking part. Thurman got a big kick out of it. After that we wandered around the temple for a while before walking back down the hill and heading back into town.

Catching up.

I finally got the chance to go through my pictures from the wedding two weekends ago. Unfortunately not a single picture of the ceremony itself is good enough to post - without exception they are all either out of focus or capture such fascinating items as the back of assorted people's heads.

The one picture that did come out OK was this group shot. Most of the people in this picture are from work, however there are only a few that I actually interact with. The bride and groom are the two standing up right in the middle. Hopefully no-one will mind me posting this.



I also took a few pictures in downtown Pune on Saturday afternoon (my camera always seems to do better with outdoor shots). I liked the building in the shot below a lot. It seems to have a little bit of everything wrapped up in one neat little package. Although you can't make it out in this shot it even has a Barista (insert obligatory chocolate cake comment here).



In other news, I enjoyed the trip to Mysore this past weekend. It was kind of nice to travel in style for a change. I'll post some picture in the next couple of days (stop rolling your eyes!)

Falling behind.

I'm off to Mysore for the weekend and I still haven't posted any of my pictures from last weekend's trip to Pune :O.

More photobloggy goodness.

I found another India photo blog linked from the one I posted last week. This one is even better.

Quick update before I pass out on my keyboard.

I had a great time in Pune this past weekend. The wedding was a lot of fun and I enjoyed hanging out with the other people from work who went up. Unfortunately most of my pictures from the ceremony itself didn't come out so great, but there are a few I can salvage. I'm too tired to give a thorough write-up or mess around with pictures right now though.

It was nice to get on the road again. Even the bus ride back last night wasn't too bad - much better than the last one I took in India. I got a reasonable amount of sleep so I felt good enough to go into work instead of taking the day off as I'd originally planned. All that travel time finally caught up with me about 5:30 though and right now I can barely keep my eyes open.

A Mumbai Photo-blog.

Check out this photo blog I stumbled across. I love some of those street scenes.

Quick pix.

Didn't do too much today. Went out after lunch and tracked down the local Barista and then ran a few errands (topped off my Kingfisher supply) but thats about it.

I did manage to get out and take a few pictures though. The first one is my apartment building. My balconies are the two directly above the ones with the bamboo screens. The second shot shows the quiet little street I live on. Quite different from my last neighborhood.



I tried to get some of the inside as well but they didn't come out so great. Maybe next time.

I'll be out of town the next two weekends. The manager I work with over here is getting married next weekend and has invited me to his wedding in Pune. Should be fun. And then the week after that Thurman (my manager) will be in Bangalore so I want to take him site-seeing. We'll probably just go Mysore for the weekend since its close and there's plenty to see there.

Settling In (redux)

I moved into my new apartment on Saturday and I'm all settled in. Moving was most definitely the right thing to do. It's difficult to explain why I like this place so much better, but less than an hour after I moved in I already felt far more at home than I ever did in my first apartment.

Pictures will be along eventually.

More pictures of my first apartment.

Since I'll be moving next weekend this is really the last chance I have to post some pictures of the current apartment. So yesterday I finally took some shots of the both the inside of my apartment and the area around where I'm living.

The first shot shows some shops on Sarjapur road. The big grey building behind the trees is my apartment building. Off to the left you can see the "Classic Department Stores" which is actually the local grocery store.

The architecture of the building itself is pretty interesting. The major hallways are wide and open to the air, and there are large vertical shafts running from top to bottom. You can see in the second shot how some of them create the effect of inside alleyways. This layout provides plenty of air circulation which helps cool the apartments, however their are disadvantages. After a rainstorm last week the marble floors in the hallways got very wet and very slippery.




Finally here are a couple pictures of the inside of my apartment itself. I couldn't really get a good one of the bedrooms so these mostly show the living area (of course I pretty much live right here in front of my computer). The first shot shows my dining area and the entrance to the kitchen. The second is looking the other direction and shows the living room.




Finally, it wouldn't be southern India without the kitschy trashcans.

Some (lousy) pictures.

The pictures probably aren't really worth posting, but I want to get something up and I haven't managed to take anything better yet. Nothing too exciting - just my apartment building and the Barista on MG road.



Today I went out apartment hunting with some help from the manager of the group I'm working with. The place I'm in isn't bad but it's kind of in the middle of nowhere and is very expensive for what I'm getting. I found a place I like right in Koramangala, which is a very nice and rather trendy neighborhood (kind of like Manayunk to Philadelphia). The apartment is quite a bit smaller than my current place but it's alot nicer and I think I'll be much more comfortable there. I'm supposed to be going back on Monday to put a down payment on it to hold in until my month here is up.

Mamalapuram in the news.

In the weeks after the tsunami in December I remember furiously googling for any news from Mamalapuram and Pondicherry but never managed to find anything.

Tonight I ran across this story about some ruins that were newly uncovered when the tsunami hit Mamalapuram. I guess this means I'll have to force myself to go back one of these days.

I was also very glad to see from this article that the death toll was minimal. Considering the location I had expected much worse.

Purple people day.

Today is the final day of Holi so I was a bit wary when I went out for lunch. However, Holi is mostly celebrated in the north and other than some residents of my apartment building there wasn't much of the usual exuberant mayhem. I managed to escape with only a few streaks of green dye on my face.

Not much else to report. I'm already settling into quite a routine. In fact I even rode to work with the same auto-rickshaw driver 4 out of 5 days last week. And I still haven't taken any pictures worth posting yet.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.

Two to three times a day a uniformed busboy appears in my cubicle at work to collect any dirty coffee/tea cups (which are ceramic rather than paper) and carries them off on a little tray.