7-8/mar on the way to hampi

The room was very nice in agonda, it was a hut, made out of bamboo, the structure, and palm leaves covering the five sides. And the bed was very big, with a nice mosquito net, where was possible to hear the sea, a few birds… there was only another person in my place, a girl from Greece.
Took to buses that let me in margao. There, I wanted to go to hampi by train, but it’s leaving only twice a week, and it had already left yesterday. All the sleeper buses were full, and the last option was to take a normal urban bus, with very little space for the legs, hard seats, and almost a 90 degrees back…
Goa, margao, it’s a different place. You can smell the Portuguese influence all around. The buildings, not high, with very loud colors, clay tiles on the roofs, nice wooden balconies… and no bamboo houses or palm leaves. And the people… Girls dress western style, and I can not avoid thinking about brazil. Here many people is still Christian. I think most of the population of goa, and this can also be seen in the names of the shops, surnames like fernandes, dias, rodrigues…
I had dinner with an Italian woman (45) that was very very talkative, and after that, while waiting for the bus, wrote a few mails.
The bus journey was long and tiring. 11 hours. My knees were touching constantly the back of the seat that was in front of me, and the man sitting right next to me was sleeping and leaning on me all the time! So, even if the cleanliness is no the most common thing in India, I decided to leave the whole seat to my neighbor and sleep on the floor, surrounded by feet, shoes and bags. It was dirty, but much more comfortable, and I managed to sleep a few hours.
We reached hospet at 6 am and the bus to hampi was leaving at 7:45 am.
And I found, very fast, a very nice and quite cheap room, in the center, that is something easy since hampi is very small. Everything I’ve seen from the bus, looked so amazing and different to all the things I’d seen before.

17/3/05