Hampi - India

Wow. Just wow. No matter what words I try to describe this place with, mine and no other words will do justice to this sight.

A landscape that had to look like a mixture of the third Indiana Jones part, an exotic planet from Star Wars and the idea of the Neolithic revolution on the Nile Delta. The 2.5 billion-year-old rock formations appear so anthropologically placed and at the same time the view gives you the feeling that you are looking at the most natural thing that could exist anywhere. Due to the lack of vegetation, this naturalness has the appearance of static and endlessness that seems so incredible that one moves through this beauty respectfully without leaving even a trace of human presence. The city is divided by a river, with the ruins of ancient temples scattered across the landscape to the south and the rock formations to the north of the river that take your breath away. The rocks are ideal for bouldering, climbing and as an obstacle course. So while you're hanging on the stones with lime-powdered hands and aching fingers while the sun beats down on you and you realize that these rocks are half as old as the earth, you feel an incredible closeness to nature.

I don't think I've ever climbed as aggressively and dangerously as I did there, which is mainly due to my stubbornness. When I had bouldered all the normal route, my eyes circled around a huge rock formation in the distance and I said out loud to myself without thinking, "I want to go there!". The only problem was that the rock was surrounded by a green ring of thorns and I swear with my stubbornness that I have never fought my way through such aggressive thorns. It took me 30 minutes to walk 20 meters through the bushes and, without exaggeration, I came out the other side bleeding and completely sweaty. I felt like I was caught in barbed wire that I had to pull out with some loss of hair and holes in my clothes. When I finally reached the stones, I slipped my bloody feet into my climbing shoes and began the climb, which repeatedly led the way through tricky moves over 10-20 meter deep abysses. I was rarely as concentrated and careful as during the 1½ hour climb and had to constantly think about the descent, which is usually more difficult and risky. However, the view made up for all the effort in an instant and presented me with a landscape that no camera or painter could ever capture as it existed here before me. And to reassure my family, I'll also say that my self-assessment always came before my sense of adventure ;)

I spent the rest of the time riding a scooter through the countryside, listening to Herpa Kerkeling's "Ich bin then mal weg" and going cliff diving with others. The funny audio book about the Way of St. James brought back fond memories for me of the time I made the pilgrimage on the Way of St. James. About the uniqueness of this path and how different pilgrimage is from backpacking. Not only that on the Camino all the people walk the same path and you accompany some of them for weeks, but also the indescribable influence of the path on you. This experience was nice :)

There are few backpackers in Hampi and so I spend most of the time alone and start to long for people when I meet Herpa Kerkeling and ask myself what all the alone time will do to me during the year. At the same time, there is also an irrational fear of being alone, since you meet new people every few days, but the duration of these encounters is usually quite short. I have thoughts floating around in my head about how I'm losing the ability to interact socially and also losing some of my childlike behavior. When you travel alone you do a lot less nonsense and I was/am worried that I would let this page disappear by neglecting it. I don't want to be an adult, so yes, actually, and in many aspects that's true. Rather, I don't want to lose the childlike creativity, the optimism, the fascination for everything and everyone and the lightness. Then again, when I sit on the beach, see a scrap of fabric and imagine an adventurous story behind this cloth, I think that I will definitely fight against it passively.

Maybe there was once a Shadira, the daughter of a wealthy coffee plantation owner, who one day saw a young Arab from Yemen in her fields. Their eyes caught each other and a warmth like she had never felt before arose within her. They met secretly and only for a maximum of five minutes to avoid being discovered. If the young girl from the high caste were to be seen with a wise man who came as a guest worker due to financial need, the shy boy would at best be sent home, if not mutilated. One day, when Shadira's father announced her arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner from Pune, she panicked and Shadira went to young Abraham to tell him the bad news. Abraham then gave her his sunscreen on his head, since he didn't have any more, as a reminder and sign of their love. Two months later and a week before their wedding, Abraham was suddenly deported to his homeland and Shadira was devastated. She sneaked out at night and built a bamboo boat in a small bay with which she planned to sail the Arabian Sea to Yemen. The night before her wedding, she secretly went to the boat in the storm and rain, hugged Abraham's sun protection and climbed into the boat full of longing. She didn't make it 100 km when the current and waves capsized her raft. Days after that night, Abraham's sunscreen washed up here on the Indian coast and is now in front of me. Maybe this scrap of fabric is just a broken shirt that someone threw here. But my version is somehow more exciting :D Somehow you just have to process all the mysteries and the input.

On the last evening I watched the sunset at a monkey temple on a mountain, from where you had a 360° view over the next 60km, and was looking forward to socializing in North Goa. As luck would have it, a group of Russians suddenly crawled up and asked if I would like to smoke a ganja pipe with them. I politely declined and at the same moment thought, "You smoke weed twice every year and haven't done it this year. Now you're up here in probably the most beautiful place in the world and your stubborn rejection of drugs is now stopping you from doing so to have a damn fun and sociable evening!". So I cautiously said that I would perhaps make an exception and sat down with the cheerful group of emigrants from Moscow. So, a little dazed with Bob Marley's "best of" album (as we should be), we giggled, sang our favorite songs, danced and enjoyed the view. It was definitely the right decision :)

Unfortunately, the return journey on the night bus felt as if I was heading straight towards the gates of the eternal inferno, which surprised me because the journey there was actually quite pleasant. But when booking the return trip I made two crucial mistakes.

1. I had a berth that was not parallel to the street, but rather orthogonal. The problem is that lying people are shaped roughly like cylinders and if you lie parallel to the road and the bus driver brakes or accelerates you only move slightly forwards or backwards. But if you then lie turned 90° to the force acting on you, you roll back and forth like a tree trunk.

2. I booked the last place (behind the rear wheels) and continued learning physical and mechanical principles. When the bus hits a pothole (and Indian roads are inspired by Swiss cheese), the shock absorbers transfer the force to the surface around them. If you lie far away and between the tires, the force is distributed over the large area, at least I think. But when you're lying in that little bit behind the rear tire, there's not much to distribute and you're jumping around like a frog. So the return journey was more like a spin cycle on an industrial washing machine and I almost went crazy.