Last Day in Hampi

So tonight is my last night in Hampi as tomorrow I take a bus to Mysore, before heading to Mumbai to fly out of India.  Last night we made another trip to Jungli Plateau to sleep out and climb there in the morning and evening, so I've had an awesome last couple of days here.  The day before that we climbed at Egg Boulder area, and I sent the classic Egg Boulder, a 6c or V5.  The pictures below catch the crux moves of the boulder, a series of slaps up a really wide bulge (you can also see why it's called Egg Boulder).  It's a cool area because unlike most of Hampi which is filled with sharp small holds the boulders around the Egg have feature climbing, with big slopers and lots of corners.

The first of these shots below is Andy working a 7a sit next to Egg Boulder, and the other two are from when we did some night climbing by fire and headlamp light at Jungli Plateau.  The second climber is Maxi, a German sport climber, and the third is of Yu, a Japanese climber who makes everything look difficult but nonetheless climbs it; he's pretty fun to watch.

So tomorrow morning I'm going to have one last session on my project Surf Traverse, then an a relaxing day before catching a sleeper bus to Mysore.  Two days there then a 36 hour train journey to Mumbai, where I'll see the city for two days and then fly home to London and Wales.

Double Arete Video

Andy (the same Andy who I traveled to Gokarna with) took a video of my second attempt send of Double Arete.  I didn't think I would be able to upload it but then I realized if the internet here can handle Skype surely it can handle a YouTube upload (though it did take about 30 minutes).  The video starts a couple of holds into the boulder, I started where the chalk starts, but it gets the hardest part, the final move to the lip.  You can also see me confuse left and right :).  Despite everyone below telling me to go left I still manage to think right haha.

On the cultural side of things yesterday I rented a scooter and spent the day visiting all the ruins.  It's surreal here, even more so than ruins usually are.  In Pompeii or Rome or even the castles in the UK you can visualize everything that was at the site.  You see the walls of a fort or the Colosseum or in the case of Pompeii an entire town and you can imagine what the city looked like and how the people interacted with their surroundings.  In Rome you replace tourist shops with Roman markets in your head but in Hampi because of the scale of what's missing you can't do that.  Here of the sixty square miles enclosed by the ruins of the city's walls only the Royal Centre and the temples remain, as they were the parts of the city constructed with granite.  So to imagine what it must of been like you have to imagine about 55 square miles or more of city out of nothing, as only shrub and granite hills remain.

I rented the scooter I had on the side of the river I'm staying, so I had to take it across the river on a boat to get the ruins.  My plan was to take the road back, using the closest bridge (the road that used to bridge the river at Hampi is now underwater...). I expected a forty minute trip but as it turned out the next bridge was more than an hour down the river.  Before I ran out of petrol I managed to buy a litre in a small town where no-one spoke English by pointing to the tank of the scooter after stopping next to random people on the street.  I got directions by repeating the name of the closest town to where I'm staying; Anegundi.  Two hours later I was back in my guesthouse, relieved to have not got totally lost or run out of petrol.  But it was worth it to see some more of the real rural India.  In Hampi everyone speaks English and many of the Indians here work full time in the tourism industry; they spend summers working in the North then come down to Hampi when the tourist season starts here.  Fifteen minutes in any direction though and all the children yell, "Hello!" as you drive through a village and Hindi is the only language.  I also passed through some more industrialized rather than agricultural towns and there is definitely a difference between the two.  Hopefully India can find a better balance between the wealth industrialism brings and it's human costs.  The West isn't a great example in that way.

Hope you enjoy the video, and thanks for reading!

Projects

As the temperatures continue to (slowly) drop here, some of the harder climbs are becoming more and possible.  Until it's cool the heat and humidity mean climbing at one's limit is very difficult; your hands sweat too much and the friction with the rock isn't nearly as good.  That's why we wake up before six and try climbs like the one below before the sun has risen and while the moon is still in the sky.  The climber in the shot is a Canadian from Vancouver called Nathan, and the climb is called Goan Corner.  It's named after the guesthouse all the climbers stay at, and for Hampi it's famous.  It's one of the climbs people come here to try.

Later the same day I worked my project, a V9 or harder on an overhang.  The first move is a huge left hand throw from two small holds to one of biggest and most incut grips in Hampi.  After rocking up on the super high feet you push backwards and grab the jug just as your feet come off the wall.  Your body swings back as your feet cut and you hang from one arm as you regain control and continue climbing.  It took me two solid sessions to get that move alone but now I've climbed from the start to a rail at the beginning of the difficult technical face you finish with.  Hopefully I'll finish the whole climb before I go not just because of it's difficulty but also because of it's uniqueness; very rarely in Hampi do you have overhangs and dynamic movement like this.

I've got another project called Surf Traverse which follows a line of okay crimps (ledges) diagonally up another overhanging face.  I've been working it with a Slovakian called Jaru and after our third session on it yesterday I think we finally have worked out the most efficient way to climb it.  If I climb it it will be my hardest boulder ever so I'm psyched to try it again after some rest.  The crux is at the end so you need to be fresh to do it. Hopefully next post I'll have some photos of me finishing it!

The Shakti Stone

Two nights ago most of the climbers at my guest house slept out on Jungli Plateau, an area too far away to get to and from in one day and climb.  After an evening session climbing we made a fire and slept on our crash pads before waking up as the sun rose to climb all morning.  Not long after this shot we were climbing some awesome boulders that unlike the stuff close to where we stay rarely see ascents.  The plateau is just by a reservoir so both days we there we spent time swiming in the lake it creates, cooling off from the the hot Indian sun.

These shots below are of an unnamed double arete on the plateau.  The Indian in the first shot is Tom of Tom and Jerry's climbing shop in Hampi.  This year he and his friend Jerry opened the first climbing store in Hampi and do guided climbing trips to the boulders while renting shoes and crash pads and selling some other gear.  They're both avid climbers and are here for the long run.  The second and fourth shots are of Gal, an Israeli climber who is in India for the second time.  Nick, an experienced climber from Manchester who has been coming to Hampi for 7 years, is the climber in the third and last pictures.  He has been climbing significantly longer than I have been alive and without him we wouldn't have found half the stuff we climbed on the plateau.  In the areas he knows well it's like having a walking guidebook!  He's also a very strong boulderer, and does many of the 7bs (V8s) here in Hampi.  Finally Fabienne from Switzerland is climbing in the fourth shot.

After this area we made our way to the Shakti Stone.  The boulder is precariously balanced above a large drop overlooking a canal running from the nearby reservoir.  The obvious and stunning middle line up the boulder has some loose rock but is safe to climb.  I was planning on resting but once I saw it not climbing was no longer an option haha.  The climbing is easy but fun, but the drop, despite not being somewhere you would fall, definitely adds an edge to the climb.

And to finish the post, here are some shots of a highball V5 called Cosmic Crimp.  The crux (hardest part) is low so it's not very dangerous; after where I am in the second shot the angle tilts back and it would be very unlikely you would fall.  But unlike some of the other highballs I've done this was not my style at all and doing it once was more than enough.  Everyone has a different build and different strengths when they climb, and this boulder definitely did not play to mine.  Nonetheless, glad I did it once.

The idea of going to the competition in Hyderabad slowly died so it looks like I'll be here for two weeks or just less, before heading to Mumbai (maybe via Mysore) for my flight to London.  So now I've got less than 10 days of climbing here to finish my projects; the climbs I've been trying and working but haven't finished.

Thanks for reading!

Tick-list in Hampi so Far

I haven't done much since my last post because I managed to catch a cold in India despite the warm weather.  However, while resting and relaxing away my cold I did manage to made another trip across the river to explore some more of the ruins and temples.  I visited a temple dedicated to Ganesha (the Hindu god with the elephant features) that had a huge granite statue of the god contained in its dark own chamber.  As you enter the temple you step into a square room well lit through the large entryway.  To your sides are two other chambers of the same size, but in front of you is a third bigger chamber.  You expect this third room to be the same dimensions as the others so when you can't see the walls and instead the over twice your height figure of Ganesha is totally surrounded by shadow it's quite eery.  The raised floor blocks separating the rooms mean even the ground around the statue is in shadow.  Needless to say, I didn't join Ganesha and instead just stayed in the well lit entry chamber!

I feel better now though, so the last two days I've been climbing.  The unique climbing here with such sharp rock and so many small holds has taken some getting used to, but I think after my rest at the beach I've come back stronger and finally adjusted to the climbing.  I'll just run through a quick tick-list of what I've climbed in Hampi so far now that I've done some more hard climbs.  This will be mostly be for the climbers reading.

7b (V8) flash, but it might be soft, perhaps hard 7a+.  It depends what you're used to though, some people say 7b.  Two large crimps to start with high but also good feet, followed by one hard left hand throw to another good crimp.

7b (V8) second try.  The problem is called Double Arete, and you just slap your way up two opposing right angle aretes till you reach a high sidepull-crimp for your left hand as the arete ends.  Finally you get a high insecure smear with your right foot and throw to the lip.  Really fun mantle with a heel hook to top out.  Almost got the flash.... fell on the last move.

7b (V8) third try.  This one was definitely soft, 7a+ max, maybe even 7a.  Still a cool problem though, side pull and crimp to start with a heel, then a sloper you have to match, followed my an undercling move to the top.

There's a 7c/7c+ (V9/V10) I've been working and have done the crux throws of.  It's listed as a project in the guidebook but I'm sure it's been climbed.  It took me two sessions to do the first move, so it's definitely hard.  Even now I only get it a third of the time.  I just need the beta for the top (it's quite high), and I'll get it.  I also almost got a 7b+ (V8/9) next to Double Arete.  It's a super crimpy quite short problem, and I'm just two moves away from the send.  I couldn't flash V8 when I left Houston, and even if the 8 I flashed was soft, flashing that grade is definitely now within my limit.  It's nice to know you've gotten better at something, and I'm psyched to go back to the US and try climbs I've attempted before and hopefully do better on them.  

So my plans for the week couple of weeks are to keep climbing here and maybe attend a competition in Hyderabad on the 2nd of December.  The comp entrance fee is cheap so hopefully we can get a group of climbers from Hampi to travel up together to compete.  Comps are always good motivation, and there's usually a friendly atmosphere with climbers helping each other and swapping tips.  Also some strong Indian climbers will be there and meeting them would be awesome.  So bye till next time!

Back from the Beach

Early start today to catch a train to Hospet, then only a short rickshaw ride to Hampi.  The train system in India is fantastic; huge trains covering the ground between all the cities and towns in India.  It's hard to get across the scale of the railways in text, but for some context there are over 100,000km of track (the circumference of the Earth is only 40,000km), and people travel over 694,000,000,000km a year using the trains.  Those are only the 2007 numbers, so five years later it must be even more.  Thinking about stuff like this is when you realize how large a country India really is.

Aside from the mind-boggling scale of the railways, it's also the best way to see the Indian country side.  About an hour out of Goa we passed through a tropically forested valley.  You could see from a distance a huge waterfall cascading down from a peak, then slowly as the train gained height edging round the hills surrounding the valley you pass directly below the fall.  I have a video taken from the carriage door as we passed below it on my iPhone, but unfortunately it would take hours to upload it from here.  Then another two hours after that we were in Karnataka state proper, and the land was dead flat till another 3 hours later we started to see the granite outcrops uncharacteristic of Hampi.

I was sitting across from two English girls, but further into the ride we started talking to an 11 year old Indian boy travelling with his family back from Goa to Hubli, Karnataka.  He spoke great English, and in no time we were showing pictures of family, friends, and our homes to his family while they did the same for us.  The magic of camera phones.... They were surprised to see peacocks in suburban Houston, and loved the picture I showed them of my then a baby cousin William taking a bath in our sink.  This was after they showed baby pictures of their new nephew to the three of us.

Here are the photos I promised during my last post.  My last night in Gokarna Andy and I walked to a point overlooking the beach we were staying at and watched the sunset from there.  It was a totally different experience from watching on the beach, and I was surprised we had the point to ourselves.  Andy has a little portable speaker, so we watched the sunset pictured below while listening to BBNG, Roy Hargrove, and a couple of other alternative jazz groups Andy had on his iPod.

And finally, here is a picture of Andy himself taken while we were messing about having realized we had walked up way to earlier from the sunset; a vividly coloured butterfly from the same time (I saw a similar one earlier in the day that was hot pink and black); and some other bug that decided to perch on my shirt.

After a lie in tomorrow morning, I'll be back on the rock in the evening feeling rested and ready after 5 days off at the beach.  Thanks for reading!

Gokarna

Today is my third day in Gokarna, and I have done nothing but read, sit on the beach, and swim :).  I traveled here with a Brit called Andy who I met climbing in Hampi.  The bus we took arrived at 4am Friday, so after walking from the town to the beach in complete darkness we waited for the sun to rise behind us; it was pretty awesome.  Tomorrow I'm taking the train to Goa for one night on Vagator beach before heading back to Hampi the day after.  The internet here is really slow so I'll do a bigger post with pictures from the train journeys as well when I'm back in Hampi, but until then here are two pictures of Om Beach, Gokarna.

Cosmic Arete

So while all the rock in Hampi is the same type of granite, for the purposes of climbing there are two types.  The burnt orange rock that's been exposed to the elements and I assume oxidized, and the grey rock that has been split off more recently and is usually smoother and featureless (it hasn't been eroded).  This climb, Cosmic Arete, climbs a corner (arete is climber-speak for corner) where the two types meet.  So for your left hand you have a series of slopy side-pulls of the grey granite and for your right little ledges on the orange face.

I tried the climb on one of my first days and barely did the high start after many tries, but I went back the other day and did it from the low start second try.  Pretty nice to surprise myself like that :).  I'm used to the rock here now I guess.  These pictures are of the crux of the low start:

And here is Ben from St. Louis (who has know left for Delhi then China with his wife) just coming short on the same move.

I did another awesome problem yesterday, a V8 on the grey rock.  You start on a ledge with a high heel and a big left hand side-pull and with a low left foot you rock up to this right hand sloper in a flaring horizontal crack.  There's a little little crimp in the middle of it you have to hit just right.  You match with a gaston and after getting your feet up onto the start holds switch the hands to two under-clings in the top of the crack, reaching up with your left hand to the top ofthe boulder.  That was were I slipped off on my flash attempt; my right foot popped off after I had grabbed the top....  Got it third try, however I'm not sure if it's really V8.  Non-climbers will catch only half of this paragraph, sorry!

After ten days of this rock I now barely have any skin on my fingers, so I think tomorrow or the day after it's off to Gokarna and Goa for four or five days, then back to Hampi for more bouldering.

Hampi Ruins

Earlier this week I braved the heat and spent a day across the river from where I'm staying and explored the Hampi Ruins.  The river is still eerily dark and red because of the runoff from the storm, but that hasn't been stopping Indians from washing clothes, bathing and drinking it.  They have crazy, crazy immune systems.

The temples you can see across the river are the same ones you could see in the background of some of the climbing photos from my last post.  This temple complex and the ruins of the royal palace above it were the center of a huge city of over half a million people during the 13th to 16th centuries, before it was sacked by a Muslim confederation from the north.  As the capital of an Indian empire, it was larger than all the European cities of that time and attracted traders from the Middle East and beyond.  It's weird to think about because all that's left over from what was once a bustling metropolis are a few villages and a series of ruins.

You can see how intricate some of the temple carvings are in the shot below.  The taller of the two buildings is just a gate house for the temple, and like many Hindu temples a lot of the sculpture is erotically themed.

The cravings are that much impressive because of how hard granite is.  All of the stone in Hampi is granite, and the Indians use it in any and all buildings.  There's so much here it's cheaper to use than wood for construction.  There's a rough granite column in every corners of every building it seems like.  They only use wood for roof supports, and a lot of it is bamboo.

Some of the climbers here were talking about doing a night bouldering session with headlights, lamps and a fire because its so much cooler after the sun sets.  Unfortunately it didn't end up happening last night, but hopefully some time soon it will and I'll be able to take some awesome night shots and post them.  'Til then, bye!

Hampi, India

Finally found some time to go to an internet cafe today.  I brought the bad weather with me from Vietnam and after arriving into Hampi on Wednesday today was the first full day without rain.  A huge storm hit southern India and so during my first 48 hours here there were maybe 4 hours of power total.  I managed to climb the afternoon I arrived, then I spent a whole day in the restaurant of my guest house talking, reading, and complaining about the torrential rain.  We managed a couple of sessions the next two days but it was still raining on and off.  Today I climbed all morning and now I need a break tomorrow.  Aside from the whether it's really relaxed here and all the climbers stay at the same guest house that rents bouldering gear and has a great restaurant, so it's easy to meet people and socialize.

Unfortunately now it's stopped raining it gets so hot during the day that a 6am start to the climbing day and then stopping at 10am till evening is the only way to go.  It works out though, because the granite here is so sharp and rough that if you tried a full day your skin would be absolutely shredded by the end.  The climbing is really crimpy (small little ledges) with sharp crystals, and at some points you just have to accept it's going to hurt your skin.  But you're rewarded with awesome lines on granite plateaus with Hindu temples and royal ruins in the background; absolutely stunning vistas, especially as the sun is setting.

This particular problem (climb) was a really good V6, made better by the fact there were seven or so people trying and working it.  One of the best parts of bouldering rather than climbing on ropes is the social aspect; it's pretty awesome to have six others trying the same moves and swapping tips.  I was the first to get but the time we left almost everyone had climbed it.

These two below are of Ben, a Missourian who lives in St. Louis that I've been climbing with.  He and his wife are taking an extended trip through India before heading to China to work (I believe as English teachers but I might be misremembering).

 

There are a ton of Spanish speaking climbers here too.  Below are two of them, Dom from Spain and Beady from Latin America I believe.  The female climber, Beady, finished the climb before most of the guys in less tries than almost everyone, it was pretty impressive.

 

 

So thanks for reading.  This afternoon I'm visiting Hampi proper to see some of the ancient ruins and Hindu temples, so next time I blog I should have some cultural photos as well.  But until then I hope you enjoyed the climbing shots.

Vietnamese Pagodas

In Vietnam they call Buddhist temples pagodas (the term temple is reserved for worship of ancestors or heroes).  So today, during a typhoon, I visited a pagoda.

It got a little bit sketchy when on the way back during the hour long rowboat ride down the river the rain was so bad we had to scoop water out of the sheet-metal row boat using water bottles cut in half.  Oh Vietnam.....

But the pagoda itself was really cool.  It wasn't what I was expecting at all as all the shrines are in caves, the deepest being considered the most important.  The picture above is the view out of the biggest caves (none of the pictures I took inside the caves are light enough).  Really interesting place, just a shame it was so wet.

Luckily my plane is still on schedule for tomorrow, so by tomorrow night I should be in Mumbai, India.  Then off to Hampi for a month of bouldering.

Photos of Vietnam

So I finally have access to a computer, and here are all the good photos I took on Cat Ba:

I took those three on the day I motorbiked around the island.  The picture below is one of those crazy Vietnamese things that just makes you look again and say, "What!?"  There are tons of these cement boats in the bay, and I have no idea how they float but apparently they work fine.  Another one of those moments was when I saw two scooters riding next to each other in town with four adults on each.  Below the boat are more pictures I took the days I went deep water soloing.

You can see one of the "basket boats" the fishermen (and climbers) use in the foreground, and the guy on the left is Dave, one of the guides who I climbed with on his off days.  He's going back to California (along with another of the guides Sander) before spring.  Hopefully I'll be able to meet up with them and have some partners for California.  Maybe Joshua Tree!

The Vietnamese guy in the last photo is Vu.  He is the best Vietnamese climber and climbs harder than me on ropes.... barefoot.  He's sent 5.13c and is one of two Vietnamese climbing guides on the island, the other being his little brother.  He climbs better barefoot than in shoes, but tries to use shoes as he thinks once he learns how to use them he'll be better with them.

So those are all the Cat Ba pictures worth posting, hope you enjoyed seeing them :).