Karnataka

S and I have spent the last week exploring the state of Karnataka. From Hyderabad, we took a public overnight bus to Hampi, which is the site of some the most impressive Hindu ruins in the country. The town and ruins are located in a bizarre volcanic boulder landscape which gives the area a surrealistic feeling. We rented bikes today and toured the site, which is a vast capitol of a former southern empire that was completely abandoned hundreds of years ago. Ruined temples, palaces and old bazaars dot the 27 km landscape. As there are so many ruins covering such a large area, it was exciting to stumble upon an interesting ruin that we had not expected. We obviously only made a small dent in terms of what we were able to see in two days but it was full of delightful surprises. We decided to upgrade to a sleeper bus for our overnight journey to Bangalore. On sleeper buses, the bottom row has reclining chairs and the upper rows have double and single beds. S and I thought we were traveling in luxury and were very much looking forward to a good night's sleep but the bumpy road had us bouncing up and down all night long on our sleeper beds. We spent much of the next morning catching up on sleep in our hotel. Banagalore is the booming IT center of India and is also known as the City of Gardens. The gardens were quite beautiful and the city overall was clean by developed world standards and we enjoyed visiting old palaces ruled by the Wodeyars and the active temples in the area.
Yesterday we took a short bus (3 and a half hours) to Mysore, a city also ruled by the Wodeyars from the 16th century. In Mysore, however, the palaces left by the ruling family are much more ornate and bigger. After exploring the palace this afternoon, we will take our last overnight bus (yay to no more long buses or trains in India!!!) to Cochin in the stare of Kerala. Only 13 more days left in India- time has flown by so fast.