Hanuman did it!

After the eventful bus trip, we arrived in Hampi. It's a town with the most mind boggling boulders every where and huge stone temples. Many of which are filled with stone works of Hanuman - the Monkey God representing Bhakti (loving devotion) and Seva (service).

We arrived during a festival that only happens every 100 years, so the town was buzzing, mostly with locals and people from villages, many of which seem to have never seen a white person before in their life. While watching the parade - there was a moment when we questioned if the entertainment was the parade or us white girls. A crowd of men formed around us with wide eyes hoping to catch a glimpse of eye contact from any of us signalling that it would be ok for them to come talk to us or touch us. And those were the respectful ones.  Mostly they just come up, touch us, ask us where we're from and want to take a picture. It's fine for the first few, but as soon as anyone sees that we're willing to smile for the camera - there are hordes of men lining up for their turn. Carly, the beautiful English girl we're traveling with isn't so good at not making eye contact yet - so she attracts heaps of attention. Karla has a professional style camera, so everyone wants her to take their picture. I was left dodging eye contact and working as a body guard trying to keep the three of us girls together and finally having to say 'no' to the crowds of men wanting their chance at love.

At one point, I thought maybe they won't want our picture if I make faces at the camera. However, that quickly backfired as they thought it was hilarious and wanted more cross eyed, flaired nostril, twisted tongue Kali-inspired pictures. Whoops! At least it made us laugh about the mob attacks.

After enough mob photo sessions, we retreated back to the tourist side of Hampi. There is a thriving climbing community here as the town rests in and among massive boulders. There are tourists walking through town with what looks like a portable massage table on their backs. This seemingly portable massage table is actually a crash pad for bouldering. If you're not familiar with bouldering, it's like rock climbing without any ropes or harnesses. The climbers wear climbing shoes and have chalk pouches attached at their waist and figure out how to climb up the boulders the hard way. It's interesting to watch this ballet-like movement on the rocks. Many of the climbers are also meditators which helps them to focus.

I quickly established a routine here of waking before the sun, trekking out onto the boulders and doing my sunrise yoga practice followed by my seated practice while welcoming the light of day. Once I was done on the first day, I went back to the guesthouse, woke up the girls and told them that they HAD to get up with me from now on... there's something so magical about sunrise.

I chose to climb up the rocks the easy way so I can perch myself up high for meditation and contemplation. The rocks have huge lines of quartz crystal in them which is quite powerful to sit on. Each of us girls had our own contemplation of  how this landscape came to be. One afternoon, we walked out to the rocks with a climber from England who was sleeping in the hammock of our guesthouse. Carly asked him if he knew how the rocks got like this. He looked at us like we must have just arrived and said "I guess Hanuman was mad one day and started throwing rocks around."

I think: "Of course that's what happened... we are in India."

The love deepens for this land...