Belur & Halebid

Leaving Mysore, we bussed to Belur - a small town which rarely sees tourists, and has little interest in them regardless. Having spent the bus journey with a local snoozing on my shoulder (he kept giving the most shocked look when awaking and discovering what he'd done - the dribble on my shoulder was a little gross), I expected to be relieved on arriving. However, we arrived at the lone hotel in town to find a troop of police officers milling around - was it a crime scene? Was somebody important staying? We quickly deduced that, in fact, Belur is such a quiet town that the police have little else to do but chill in the hotel rooms and burp in the restaurant.

After lunch in the belching-heavy restaurant, we took a short bus to neighbouring Halebid - another awesomely intricately carved (including some pardy animal carvings, see below) temple set in beautiful grounds. A fantastic place to chill out and take lots of selfies - including one "selfie-within-a-selfie". Meta. So zen did we become that I bought my first piece of gap trash: sitting by Nandi, I suddenly heard the Titanic soundtrack drifting through the air to me - entranced, I followed the sound to a flute-seller who played the tune as I blew. I was sold. Lissy left me soon after.

We returned to Belur (admittedly I had already asked Liss to hide my flute in fear of ridicule by the locals), where we visited the temple complex as evening settled. In the growing dark, worshippers flooded to the central sanctum - we peered inside at the scenes of cymballed, flowered praise of the deity which were becoming increasingly raucous. The prayer culminated in a procession - led by two saxophone-toting monks - of the statue around the grounds, which we slipped away from, returning to the crime scene for bed.
We would leave early the next morning for Hampi, but that didn't perturb me - I had a flute repertoire to build.

With love