[Day 18-19] Scooters and sickness

The morning of the 18th, I was ready for some more bouldering. Despite feeling a bit sick, I headed out around 6AM.

Toby, the German guy, was nowhere to be found, so I left alone. A local Indian guy had told me he’d be waiting at a nearby spot so we could boulder together. Unfortunately, when I arrived there, there was no one to be seen… In fact, I didn’t see a single other climbed that whole morning.

It’s not really ideal to go boulder by yourself, since that means there’s no one to make sure you land on the crash pad in case of a fall. Either way, I decided to go check out the famous Double Arrete 7B boulder. The landing was rather sketchy though, and with only a single crash pad and no one to catch me, I didn’t dare try to get to the top. Pity, because it felt this could have been my first 7B outside :(.

Double Arrete, the landing was too sketchy to try and climb it all by myself.

By now, I had been in Hampi for the better part of a week, and I wanted to see a few more things before leaving India. So, I spend the afternoon planning my last 10 days. While doing so, I met a very nice English couple, Ana and Rob, and we decided to travel together. So now I’ll have travel buddies for those last days in India, great :)!

Ana and Rob, my travel buddies for the next 10 days.

The morning of the 19th, we got two scooters and headed out for the Hanuman temple on top of a hill a few kilometers away. The view from up there was amazing, and to make it even better, there were lots of cool monkeys on the way up/down. They smelled pretty bad though. One of them climbed on my head, so at least now I can blame the monkey if someone accuses me of stinking :).

View from the Hanuman temple.

Ana, Rob and rolling hills.

Smelly monkey on my back!

After the temple, we drove about 30km to Hospet, where we got train tickets for tomorrow to Bijapur. It was really nice being able to drive through the countryside at our own pace. The cool breeze from driving also certainly helped make this a great experience. On the way back, the chain fell of my scooter, and I was afraid I’d burn myself on something while trying to get it back on. So I started walking… Luckily, less than a minute later, some helpful Indians had me back on the road again.

Cruising around on our scooters.

Rocks and rice fields as far as the eye can see.

A Kingfisher bird somewhere along the way.

In the afternoon, Ana and Rob headed out to a lake, while I was being sick. Sickness-wise this was definitely the worst day so far, probably some kind of food poisoning: a gazillion trips to the toilet, fever, headache, feeling super weak and tired. I drank lots of water to make sure it wasn’t dehydration, but that doesn’t seem to have solved it, so I’ll just go to bed now and hope it’s all better in the morning.