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!