No sleep for Jonho again on the night bus… at least he wasn’t sick! We arrived and had a little sleep before lunch. We hired scooters off the homestay owner in the afternoon and went driving around everywhere, through villages, towns and rice fields. We were loving it just driving around aimlessly and beeping our horn at every opportunity, as the locals do! In the evening we had food at the homestay which was quite a cool place with low tables and mats/cushions on the floor and a view of the rice fields.
The next day our plan was to drive the other side of the island where the ruins and temples are but as we got there, we were stopped by the police and told that we were not allowed to be there on the scooter/ the owner should not be renting it out to people. We were taken to the police station where we had to lie to the police and say we have borrowed it and havent paid anything and then bribe them to let us take the scooter back. 2000 rupee later, we were free to go and take the bike with us. So, we headed back to the homestay for lunch and went to the monkey temple nearby where we were staying instead. To get to the monkey temple we had to climb 575 stairs and on the way up there were so many monkeys. At the top everyone was feeding them and having them jump onto their shoulders. We didn’t let them jump on us but Jonho fed them! The view from the top was really good so we stayed up here to watch sunset before heading back to the homestay.
On the next day, we drove the scooter to the boat departure point and crossed a small river via boat (and left the scooter behind this time). We visited lots of temples and ruins which were really nice to see. Some of them were built over 2000 years ago and it wasn’t really busy with other tourists so it felt like we had stepped back in time, in the middle of nowhere with nothing but old temples and ruins around us. Afterwards we had a late lunch in Hampi Island which is more of a hippie place and chilled out there. In the evening we climbed up some boulders to the sunset viewpoint.
On out final day we walked to the waterfall and swimming spot which was close by to the place we were staying. We sat on the rocks around and chilled out for most of the day/ had a swim there. Afterwards, we headed to Hampi Island area again where we had lunch and sat in the chill out area there before our night bus to Gokarna…
Kerry and Jonho's Travels 