India, Hampi, Badami, Goa

Got to India about two weeks ago. I flew into Goa, and got a train straight to Hospet and tuctuc to Hampi, where I met up with BiRT and a bunch of climbers on the Hot Rock Climbing Tour. BiRT is a converted Scania artic' cab with a custom made backend, with seats up top, and lockers underneath for all our stuff. At the moment there are 14 people on it, including the leader Danny and driver Pete. The other guys are all cool climbers from Mexico, USA, Spain, Germany, UK and until last week Flavius from Romainia. Unfortunatly he fell off Double Arete in Hampi (see the Sharma film, it's a cool looking f7b problem with a hideous landing.) He ripped some ligaments in his knee and had to go home. Hopefully will be back on Hotrock before the end, in January!

From Hampi, Badami, Goa

From Hampi, Badami, Goa

There's a good mix of abilities, Danny sent Double Arete, along with a 7b sport route pretty quickly in Badami, so is probably the strongest. The psyche is high though and I'm sure we'll all be cruising 8a by Thailand...




Hampi was very cool place but quite different to the 'real' India. A chilled out hippy paradise, sharp granite boulders as far as you could see in every direction. We stayed there until we had no skin left and went to Badami, which is very much 'real' India. Absolute poverty and apparantly lots of people who'd never seen whities before. The streets were full of filth, it seems people haven't got the concept of toilets out here yet. There are pigs and wild dogs everywhere, so at least they clean up some of the grime. We got hassled wherever we went, kids begging and adults just hassling us to try to extract some money for whatever they were selling. If the climbing wasn't WORLD CLASS we might not have enjoyed that place too much! The sandstone routes were incredible. We did tons of new trad routes and existing sport routes on superhard compact sandstone. Highlights were climbing my first 6c after clean on toprope, seconding Ed on the FA of a gruesome overhanging jamming crack, E3 5c/6a, and some brilliant other trad routes. Had a week there until muscles ached, and drove to back to Goa for some R+R on the sandy beaches, in the warm sea.

From Hampi, Badami, Goa

I had planned to stay on Hot Rock till September, and then go to Edinburgh to do a Phd. The Phd title changed to something altogether more boring, and Hot Rock is better than I could have imagined, so I'm probably going to stay the full 9 months, through China, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Back in January? Life is good...