[Day 20-21] Bijapur and the Golgumbaz

After a week in Hampi, it was time to leave. Our next stop was going to be Bijapur, and we had a long train ride ahead of us.

The 20th we spend all day on the train. A large part was in 2S seating class, which has metal bars in front of the windows instead of glass. That gave us a great view of the countryside! At one point during the ride, a little mouse started running around the railway wagon. Very cute :)!

Lots of nice countryside on the way from Hampi to Bijapur.

Rob got some food in a railway station. Not a success :).

We arrived only at 9PM, so we got a hotel room, had a quick bite and called it a night. On the way to the hotel we already caught a glimpse of our destination the next day: the Golgumbaz.

The 21st, I still wasn’t feeling all that well, so I went to a nearby pharmacy to get some antibiotics. Afterwards, we had breakfast in a very nice bakery. The cookies were so good, I bought 3 more (about 1 kg, these are big cookies) for the next days.

Delicious cookies and cake for breakfast.

Afterwards, we spend at least an hour in the train station, trying to get our tickets for tomorrow arranged. It turned out there were no more seats available on the trains we wanted to take. The people were super friendly though and really helped us to get us good connections to our next destination.

Then, finally, the Golgumbaz. I didn’t really know what to expect from this medieval dome, but it turned out to be extremely impressive. It’s the 2nd largest unsupported dome in the world and is simply massive. We walked up to the top, where we had a nice view over the surrounding area. Inside the top of the dome, you could walk around as well and there was a huge echo. Very cool!

Looking up at the dome of the Golgumbaz.

One of the many smaller domes doting the top.

The rest of the afternoon, we spend walking around, having some food and lounging in a park.

Not sure whether this is a ruin or supposed to be this way. Cool though!

Oh, and in the meantime it’s gotten extremely annoying that people constantly want to take pictures of us. It kind of makes you feel as if you’re a monkey in a zoo… So now we yell at everyone trying to capture our beautiful faces to knock it off ;).

The starers are also very annoying. The worst ones will just walk up to you and stare without saying a word. It doesn’t seem to bother them at all if you stare back, ugh… Most of the time, waving enthusiastically and staring back does seem to put them off though :).

And, finally here’s a picture of a weird commercial for ice cream.

Who though up this commercial?