The extended Republic Day weekend beckoned few of the Merchandising folks at work to plan a quick trip and Hampi it was. Will took the natural lead and became the groups primary organizer – from booking online train tickets to hotel to reading up some stuff on the erstwhile Vijayanagara kingdom. Post work on Friday Jan 24 Will and I gorged on some of ‘worlds best garlic naan’ at the expats favorite joint Ruchis and headed to the Bangalore City junction (in
between I popped in some digene – the garlic naan immediately gave me acids). A comfortable overnight train journey and the 8 of us Andy, Mike, Pam, Will, Vinay, Radha, Tejas and I reached the Hospet junction at 7:30am Saturday morning. Like every other touristy place we were soon surrounded by 5-10 auto drivers. Being with the Americans made it slightly worse; the price quoted was pretty ridiculous. But our tour guide (remember Will) came to our rescue. His brother had made a trip to Hampi a couple of months back and like a true blue Merchandise Planning team member Will made use of the historical data to forecast for the future- he knew that autos should charge about 35-40 bucks (yes Rupees) from the railway station to the hotel. To the hotel, quick shower and
breakfast we headed straight to Hampi – about 12 kms from Hospet. The terrain was extremely rocky, the heart of the Deccan plateau and most of the temples had idols that were monoliths – makes sense, who is going to move those huge boulders from one location to another. Across the next two days we visited some major landmarks like Virupksha Temple, Hemkuta Hills, saw some large Ganesha idols, Hazara-Ram Temple, Lotus Mahal, the awe-inspiring Lakshmi Narsimha idol and ended with the florid magnificence of the Vittala Temple. My new Nikon D40 was fun to use – I love it so much!! We added some flavor of adventure to our trip by waking up at 4 in the morning and heading for a hillock to witness the sunrise. I
have no clue how I climbed up those boulders in pitch dark - a complete non-adventurtist that I am. On my way down (once the sun was up and I could see properly), I was so reluctant that at one point I told my boss Radha that I rather stay up here than joining Target back in Bangalore – I have vertigo, low stamina and basically am a big sissy when it comes to being adventurous . One of the trip’s highlight was Tejas – Radha 5 year old who was such an entertainer. I loved his stories on the
zebra who had pizza with some fruits spread on it, or when asked which was the last movie he saw he mentioned the one where amma wore a blue frock and white dupatta and danced (that by the way was Radha’s kathak performance a week back). Another of our trip's highlight was the food at the multi-level Mango Tree Restaurant - go there if you want to have the worlds best crepes with
nutella, bananas and cococuts shreds. We got back safe and sound on Monday – the morning of India’s 60th Republic Day. Back home, Vinay narrated how he had a hellish weekend with all systems at work down and he spent some 2 nights working with his IT folks to get things in order. He basically missed me :)
The extended Republic Day weekend beckoned few of the Merchandising folks at work to plan a quick trip and Hampi it was. Will took the natural lead and became the groups primary organizer – from booking online train tickets to hotel to reading up some stuff on the erstwhile Vijayanagara kingdom. Post work on Friday Jan 24 Will and I gorged on some of ‘worlds best garlic naan’ at the expats favorite joint Ruchis and headed to the Bangalore City junction (in 
between I popped in some digene – the garlic naan immediately gave me acids). A comfortable overnight train journey and the 8 of us Andy, Mike, Pam, Will, Vinay, Radha, Tejas and I reached the Hospet junction at 7:30am Saturday morning. Like every other touristy place we were soon surrounded by 5-10 auto drivers. Being with the Americans made it slightly worse; the price quoted was pretty ridiculous. But our tour guide (remember Will) came to our rescue. His brother had made a trip to Hampi a couple of months back and like a true blue Merchandise Planning team member Will made use of the historical data to forecast for the future- he knew that autos should charge about 35-40 bucks (yes Rupees) from the railway station to the hotel. To the hotel, quick shower and 
breakfast we headed straight to Hampi – about 12 kms from Hospet. The terrain was extremely rocky, the heart of the Deccan plateau and most of the temples had idols that were monoliths – makes sense, who is going to move those huge boulders from one location to another. Across the next two days we visited some major landmarks like Virupksha Temple, Hemkuta Hills, saw some large Ganesha idols, Hazara-Ram Temple, Lotus Mahal, the awe-inspiring Lakshmi Narsimha idol and ended with the florid magnificence of the Vittala Temple. My new Nikon D40 was fun to use – I love it so much!! We added some flavor of adventure to our trip by waking up at 4 in the morning and heading for a hillock to witness the sunrise. I 
have no clue how I climbed up those boulders in pitch dark - a complete non-adventurtist that I am. On my way down (once the sun was up and I could see properly), I was so reluctant that at one point I told my boss Radha that I rather stay up here than joining Target back in Bangalore – I have vertigo, low stamina and basically am a big sissy when it comes to being adventurous . One of the trip’s highlight was Tejas – Radha 5 year old who was such an entertainer. I loved his stories on the 
zebra who had pizza with some fruits spread on it, or when asked which was the last movie he saw he mentioned the one where amma wore a blue frock and white dupatta and danced (that by the way was Radha’s kathak performance a week back). Another of our trip's highlight was the food at the multi-level Mango Tree Restaurant - go there if you want to have the worlds best crepes with 
nutella, bananas and cococuts shreds. We got back safe and sound on Monday – the morning of India’s 60th Republic Day. Back home, Vinay narrated how he had a hellish weekend with all systems at work down and he spent some 2 nights working with his IT folks to get things in order. He basically missed me :)
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