Andaman Islands - 2017 Family Trip

Suggestions

• Book the ferry tickets as soon as you know of your plans and it is difficult to get during the peak season for the timings of your choice.  Since I didn’t book in advance, I had to waste about an hour going to a travel agent to book the tickets.  We couldn’t get the morning ferry to
  
  go to Havelock, so got the afternoon ferry.
• It is more economical and better to do introductory scuba in Havelock than in North Bay.  It costed us 3500 rupees in North Bay but it was only 2000 rupees in Havelock.
• If you plan in advance, book the Dolphin resorts in Havelock and it is the best value for the money.  
• The Radhanagar beach is an awesome place to chill and swim.  It is not deep as well as no currents, so you can go much deeper in the water for a swim.  Compared to beach No. 5 area where the Dolphin resort is located, it is not that scenic (it is on the east side).  But if you want to spend a lot of time swimming and be in the water, go to Radhanagar beach but all of the water activities happen near the beach No. 5 area.
• The beach no. 5 area is really scenic and the water is very shallow for about quarter of a mile.  Nice area to walk around, sun bath but there are no waves.  If you have your own snorkeling gear, you should bring it with you to this area to snorkel.

  

  Radha Nagar Beach

• Hotels in Andaman get booked pretty early, so to get the best location, please plan in advance.  Havelock island is a nice place to relax and it is still not developed much which is a good thing (compared to other beach resorts).
• You are not allowed to carry liquor in the ferry, from Port Blair to Havelock.  But there’s no check on the other direction.
• After 30 minutes or so, get up to the top deck in the ferry to see a lot of people dancing for the loud music and plan to enjoy the party.

  

  Kalapather Beach

• There’s a pure vegetarian restaurant in the Radhanagar beach (in the beach itself) which is really nice.  It is the only pure vegetarian place there.
• It gets dark by 530pm, so plan your day accordingly.

My Journey

Starting Trouble

The flight got delayed more than 2 hours due to some technical issues and we were moved to a different plant after sitting the flight for an hour.  Even with the flight long flight delays, Indigo didn’t offer any snacks or meal  because it was during the lunch time but they were kind enough to offer water.

Immigration at Port Blair

Since i read about immigration for the foreigners in Andaman, I realized that I need to do some formalities before getting out of the airport.  There’s no one stopping the foreigners and advising them to get immigration done, but they the passports on the return trip.  It is a quick process and the officers were extremely friendly and helpful.

We pre-arranged a car and the drive, Sarath, was there to take us to the hotel.  It is better to browse and book for hotel hotels India specific sites because Booking.com has very limited supply and the

Corbyn's Cove

hotel that we got is not that great.  Also, if you have a contact or travel agent ask them for hotel advise.  I went through Kumar and he’s pretty professional for car services (I booked hotels through online), his information:  Blue Sea Tours & Travels, 9476045145.

Spent the first day going to the Corbyn’s Cove beach and the marina park.  Since it was new year, all these places were packed with people.  The beach seems to be a nice place to swim but there’re signs of crocodile warning everywhere, that make me think

Corbyn's Cove

twice before getting in the water.  After spending a lot of time in the beach walking around, went to the marina park to walk around.  With the number of people around there, that place is kept reasonably clean.   Had dinner int he Green Park restaurant which was ok.

The next day, we went on a day long cruise to Viper island and North Bay.  If you are not planning to do any water activities, don’t bother going on the tour to North Bay.  There is nothing much to do in North Bay other than water activities.  We did introductory scuba and it was good.

Viper Island

After we returned, we went to the Sound and Light show in the Cellular Jail and it was good.  After that we had dinner in the Vegan Creek restaurant at the Blue Sea Hotel, the food sucked and the service sucked worse than the food.

Our ferry to Havelock was at noon, so we took the tour of the saw mill, naval marine museum and tour of the Cellular jail before heading to the ferry dock.  The naval marine museum was good and it has small aquarium, tribe

Cellular Jail

history and coral/shell displays.  More educational that what I expected and it was good.  The saw mill is not that great.  The Cellular Jail didn’t have any English speaking guides available that day, which sucked.  Since we saw the light and sound show the previous day, it provided good background to the visit.  

By the time that we checked in to our rooms, it started to get dark so we took a short stroll in the beach and after that we walked to Cocoa Anju restaurant for dinner - the ambience and the food was good but it is on the expensive side.  The next day, when we were ready to

go to the Kalapather beach it started rain, but we left to the beach anyway by taxi.  Since it was raining there’s not much crowd there and we spend about an hour there before heading to the Radhanagar beach.

The drive to Radhanagar beach was nice but in a narrow muddy road.  There are a lot of eating places in that area and has very good showering/change room facilities.  We spent a lot of time swimming in there before heading back to the hotel.  We made the arrangements to go for the board dive next day morning at 6am.

This is one of my very few inactive vacations and we basically lazed around the beach the whole day.  The only active thing that we did were board dive with Underwater Tribe, who took us about a mile into the ocean to dive.  Since there was heavy rain in the previous night, the visibility was not that great but we really enjoyed the dive.  We felt better diving in the middle of ocean than just walked to dive in the North Bay. 

On our fourth day, we returned to Port Blair and just relaxed in the

room.  The other option we had was to drive 25 miles to another beach that we decided not to go because it looked like it was going to rain.  Surely, it rained a lot in the evening.

Summary

Overall, it was a nice relaxing vacation and Andaman has a lot to offer in terms of the scenic beauty and activities.  If we had more time, we would have gone for PADI certification there.

Quick Winter Trip to Iceland 2017

Suggestion

• If you are arriving Reykjavik after 10pm during winter, keep an eye out when you are about to land, you may be lucky to witness northern lights.  I was not that lucky but a few fellow travelers in a different flight were able to see the norther light
• The shuttle buses leave 30-45minutes after every flight landings in the early morning hours to the town.  
• If you are arriving early in the morning and hungry, have something before entering into the baggage area.  You have better food choices after the immigration and also, you don't have to pay taxes in this area.
  
• I am not a fan for arranged tours but in winter, it is the best choice if you want to be less stressful.  Initially I wanted to rent a car and drive, but looking the snowfall and the roads, I am glad that I didn’t rent.  Saw a few cars on the side of the road.  This is true for a solo traveler, but if you are going in a group and more time in hand, you can take risk driving on your own (but look at the weather forecast before you take on this adventure….and assuming that you have some winter driving experience).
• There are a number of companies that do multi day tours and the south beach area is pretty awesome.  If you have more days, do the south beach to experience the power of the ocean and enjoy the ice caves.
• Get used to the high prices - for example, not a great soup costs about $13 and burger & fries cost about $25.
• If you are vegetarian, you have to learn to get the best out of what is available.  In the city of Vik, I found veggie burger and in most of the other places there’s not much choice.  I managed with the egg sandwich or bought vegetarian sandwiches in the grocery shops before heading out of Reykjavik.  You have a lot of places to enjoy vegetarian food in Reykjavik.

  

  At Secret Lagoon

• Blue Lagoon is nothing but a hype and I didn’t enjoy it as much as the “Secret Lagoon” (the tour companies take you there…costs about half the price of BL) that had really hot spring water where as the BL had nice ambiance, spa but warm water.  Felt like I was in an outdoor heated pool.  If you really want to enjoy the hot springs with hot water, go to SL.
• If you still want to go to Blue Lagoon, book it in advance and it will be hard to get a slot available at the last minute.  It can be easily done on your way to the airport assuming that your flight leaves after 1pm.
• Liquor is lot cheaper in the duty free and even on your way back, you can get the mini wine bottles for cheap..hint for whoever flying with WowAir.
• It is cheaper to eat in the airport before the customs area where you don’t pay tax.  You can save a dollar on a cup of latte.
  
• Bring waterproof pants and rain jackets if you are planning to take the two day tour to the south beach because on the way you will be visiting the waterfalls Seljalandsfoss and Skogafoss where you will surely get wet even if there is no rain.  Also, take the hot pockets to warm up your toe and hands, when you standing in the open space at the middle of the night with sub-zero temperature, it will be very helpful.  Even with very good winter gear, I was freezing.
• You can look at the forecast for the northern lights before booking the tour:  http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/northern-lights-forecast/
• Download this iPhone app to take pictures of the northern lights and it does a decent job: Northern Lights Photo Taker

  

  Picture Taken with the App

• WowAir is simply amazing with more leg room and on-time service.  Pack enough water and food because there’s nothing free in the flight.  But the ticket prices are amazing.
• Your smart phone shuts down even if there’s enough battery because of the cold weather so please be aware of it if you are planning to take pictures with your smart phone
• I found the Viator tours are less expensive for the Golden Circle and don’t see any reason to pay premium for this tour because it is going to take you to the three main places.
• In some of the hotels or hostels, if you pre-book the breakfast, you get a better deal. Check it out and plan accordingly

My Journey

Arrived around 4am and decided to hang around in the airport ’till 7am because of the free wifi as well as better seating.  The seats are better before the customs area than in the baggage area.  Since I had pre-booked my two day tour for the same day of arrival, I decided to take a latter shuttle to the BSI bus terminal where I would be picked up by 9am.  I didn’t see any reason to go to the hotel to take rest because I decided that I could sleep in the van which worked out pretty good.  I booked the two day south beach tour with Extreme Island that I am happy with and they picked me from the bus terminal around 915am.

South Beach

On the way to the South Beach after Seljalandsfoss

Once we left the Reykjavik, it started to snow heavily and it was still snowing heavily when we reached the Seljalandsfoss falls.  With the wind, snow and the cold, it was pretty bad walking behind the falls and I am glad that I had waterproof pants & rain jacket.  I saw some people walking around with jeans and suffering a lot because of the chillness.  I am glad that we done with the worst weather at the beginning of the trip and the weather started get better once we started to go south.  We stopped in the same place, Seljalandsfoss, on our way back during the twilight hours, there is flood lights set up there but it was nothing great ..been told that it looks better in the complete darkness.

Skogafoss

Our second stop was Skogafoss and it was pretty nice.  Our guide, Johannes, advised us not to climb the side of the waterfall to see the view because the falls look better from down than that from the top.  And our next stop was the south beach and we were warned multiple times about the waves there.  Surely, it is so powerful and pretty high waves.  In addition to the black sand beach, Reynisfjara, the basalt rock formations and the formations of the caves on the beach are pretty interesting.  Looking at them, you may think that it is man made but surely it is not.  The Troll family rock formations in the ocean is pretty nice and the waves are hitting them hard, wondered how they managed stay without getting crumbled.

Then we started to going towards the farm house where we were staying that night and on our way we stopped to see the lava fields.  It felt like we were in a different planet with the moss growing on the lava rocks and they looked like miles and miles of large green color mushrooms.

I was able to take a couple of power naps during the drive and picked up some vegetarian sandwiches on the way to the farm house for dinner.  Instead of having dinner at a later time, I decided to have dinner early and go to bed (because the weather was bad, there is no chance of northern light that night).  The accommodation was very good and the breakfast was typical continental breakfast.

The next day morning, we left to explore the ice caves and this can be done only during the winter times.  The experience of inside the cave, seeing different glacier colors and the water holes in the cave is magical.  There’s a huge waterhole where everyone was shoving there head inside to take the “frozen” pictures.  Outside the caves, it was very cold and windy, and once you are inside the cave, it was very nice.  After the ice caves, we headed to Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon to view the broken glaciers floating to the ocean and to see the iceberg graveyard.  Except one small piece of ice berg, there’s nothing floating towards the ocean but all frozen up.  Different shapes and colors of the icebergs was totally worth making the trip to the south beach.  The view of the ice bergs scattered over the black sand beach is crazy.

On our trip back to Reykjavik, we stopped a couple of places where some of the movies were filmed and watched sunset near the Reynisfjara beach.  The plan was to have the dinner at the Viking restaurant and hunt for northern lights around 9pm.  The vegetarian dinner at the Viking restaurant sucked pretty bad, the soup was nothing but a salt water and regret eating there.  The hunting for the northern lights was a bone chilling experience, it was on the side of the highway, it was very windy and sub-zero temperature.  We saw the northern lights but it is not a great one, it was light green because the particles were not interacting with the oxygen so it was a week color. Thought that i was the only one who was freezing but when I went back to the van, I saw most of the fellow travelers trying to warm themselves before heading out again to see the northern

lights.  We waited for some excited particles but nothing got excited that night :-)  I got dropped at the hostel around 1130pm.  

Golden Circle 

I booked the Golden circle and the secret lagoon tour wth the Arctic Adventures to leave at 9am, so I was trying to get some sleep before the next busy day.  The Arctic Adventures is not that great because the tour guide was not providing that much of information on the places that we visited.  We visited the Thingvellir National Park, Gullfoss and then the geyser.  The Geyser is nothing great if you had been to Yellowstone but the other two places are very nice and not really sure why need to spend a whole day visiting them.  We left Reykjavik at 10am and we were done with all these three places by 3pm without rushing through.  The only thing was the

tour guide dropped us in one place and picked us up in a place where the walking tour ends so that we didn’t have spend time walking back.  After the Geyser, we went to the secret lagoon and spend about an hour there.  It was very well worth it.  We were back to the town by 730pm.  I was craving for some spicy food, luckily there was a Thai place closer to my hostel where I had my dinner which was really good.

I was trying to get to sleep early, but one of the guys in the hostel room was making so much noise packing and unpacking at 11pm.  Finally I managed to sleep around mid-night to wake up early morning to get ready to go the Blue Lagoon on my way to the airport.

Blue Lagoon

The Blue Lagoon has a nice ambiance to relax and get spa treatment but the water temperature is warm not hot.  If you are looking for a place to take nice pictures to impress your friends, it is the place.  They provide the lockers for the small hand luggages, all you need to bring to this place is swim wear and a towel.  If you don’t have the towel, you can rent it.  Since the water is not hot, you can stay in the water as long as you want.  There’s steam room and sauna room to relax too in the pool area.  The ride to the airport takes about maximum of 30 minutes.

Overall

Iceland is a very beautiful country.  It is not vegetarian friendly outside Reykjavik and it is expensive.  I will surely go there again in summer.

Plan your trip with couple of friends or family members so that it'd be calculated risk to rent and drive around during winter. 

Always check the WowAir fares, you get fantastic deals.  

The hostel (Hlemmur Square) that I stayed in is pretty nice and very close to a number of restaurants.  I didn't walk around the city but the city looked very nice to walk around.

Guatemala - 2016 (Antigua) - Part I

Suggestions

• When transiting through Mexico City, please plan to have a longer stop over time because of the flight delays and long lines for immigration, everyone has to go through immigration and customs. 
• Stop by the Tourist Information center near the Central Park, friendly staff provides a lot of useful information.
• Visit during the Easter time, there are a lot of processions and you can get a great cultural immersion. 
• If you have more than a week to spend and want to cover more areas, think about getting into Guatemala City and getting out of Belize City or Cancun (or the opposite direction).  Accessing Belize or Cancun from Tikal is pretty easy that will save you a overnight ride back to Guatemala City by bus.
• There are a lot of private shuttles operate between Lanquin and Lake Attitlan area, so if you have more time go for the day time ride to Lanquin from where go can easily go to Tikal.

• We couldn’t find anything to do for more than 2 days in Antigua.  If you just want to chill there, it is a place. 
• Guatemala is reasonably clean, at least in the tourist areas.  Even during the Easter celebration where thousands of people gather, the whole city was kept clean.
• If you want to enjoy the local street food, head to the La Merced church area.
• Yashkin is a very good driver who speaks good English and very punctual - his #4787-7055 (kiwis17@hotmail.com)

My Journey

Places that we visited in Guatemala - Antigua, Tikal and Lake Atitlan

Getting to Guatemala

I started to worry whether I’d be able to meet my kids in the Mexico City because the airline crew showed up 15 minutes in SFO and I have only 90 stop over in Mexico 

City.  On top of it, everyone has to go through the immigration and customs even if you are a transit passenger and the lines for the immigration were pretty long.  Just 20 minute before the flight departure, I had to cut in front of the immigration line to make it to the flight on time (last one to check-in).

Guatemala City airport is pretty small and getting out to find shuttles to go Antigua is pretty simple.  But booked a private taxi with Yashkin and he was prompt.  His dad was a German passport holder so he gets the German passport, which enabled him to work in Germany for more than 6 years before returning home to run his own business.  

El Hostel - Antigua 

El Hostel, the place where we stayed, was couple of blocks away from the Central Park area and it’s a pretty nice hostel to hangout to make new friends.  The breakfast at the hostel was pretty good.  We hung around talking to a friend from Canada (Joans) before went to the Central Park.  The Tourist Information center on the way provided very good information.

City Walk

Walked around the Central Park that was busy with a lot of activities and visited the Saint Joseph cathedral at the center, which was destroyed by the earthquake.  That church must be one of the impressive structures at that point in time.  The church at the Central Park had decorations for Easter and had a massive “alfombra” (street decoration) in the main hall.  There’s also some celebration happening in the church and the music was great.

After getting some mango slices from the street side vendor for the afternoon snack, walked towards the Santa Catalina arch and beyond.  We walked to the local market but there’s nothing interesting, so went back to the hostel.  We couldn’t go to the Pacaya hike the next day because of the festival in town. 

Easter Week Festivity

Part of the festival during the weekend, there’s a procession from the San Francisco church from where small kids, under 10 yrs., were carrying Jesus and Marry in the floats.  Some kids were happy to be in the procession and some were not.  All of the kids and adults who were participating in the procession were dressed up in black robes and carrying incense.  The whole street was very smoky with the incense. 

People started to decorate in front of their homes/businesses with “alfombra”s around 10pm and we waited for more than two hours to capture the progress of the artistic work but got tired and came back to the hostel :-(  

Woke up at early morning and walked on the procession route for more than a mile to enjoy the decorations done on the street.  There’s not much crowd at 630am and after spending about 90 minutes, we came back to the hostel for breakfast.  But within the hour when we were in the hostel, the crowd gathered in the procession route and we couldn’t even get closer to the procession.  There must be more than 100K people in the small streets.  We managed to get to a spot from where we could see the procession.

Teenage boys carried Jesus and teenage girls carried Mary floats, and the whole procession path was filled with a lot of incense smoke.  It’s a very colorful procession with people carrying the floats in the black robes and a lot of indigenous people in their colorful dresses. 

Festival Organization

We were totally impressed with the number of volunteers keeping the place, packed with a lot of people, very clean and as the floats passed over the decorations, the cleanup trucks cleaned it up immediately.

Walk to the Hill and Roaming Around the City

After having coffee in one of the cafes, where we met a few of Sharada’s friends from USC, we headed to the hill to have the panoramic view of the city.  The hike to the hill was petty easy and short, but the view was good.  There’s police everywhere in the city and in all of Guatemala we always felt safe.  

We noticed on the way to the hill that the whole city was decorated with “alfombra” because the procession

was going all over the city.  The procession started at 6am in a near by village and ends in the Central Park at 6pm.  There was live music at the city park in the evening because that’s the end point for the procession and the whole city was in a festive atmosphere and the ATMs were running out of money J Getting out of the city to the Guatemala City Bus stand in our shuttle took more than 2 hours because of the terrible traffic.

Una Zona

The bus stand is in Una Zona (Zone 1) in the Guatemala City, which is supposed to be one of the bad neighborhoods, but we felt pretty safe in the bus stand.  A few tourists ventured out to the neighborhood McDonalds to get their dinner and returned without any issues, but we didn’t want to take any risk.  The bus was on time and the bus ride was comfortable, good and freezing :-).

Hampi - 2015

Suggestions

• Getting to Hospet from Chennai was pain because of lack of good train connections.  But the inbound is somewhat fine, take the Amaravathi express at 255pm to Guntakal, arrive at 515pm, and take the 6pm Chennai mail.
• Not any direct bus from Guntakal to Hospet, you have to go to Ballari and take another bus to Hospet (buses leave every 15 minutes).  You can reach the Guntakal bus stand by share taxi from the train station (near the booking office).
• There’s limited directional signs in Hampi and it is better to get the map & the attraction information from the internet.
  
• Even though it was cloudy, it is so humid and horrible.  I could guess how bad it would in the summer months.  Except in a very few places, you have to walk on the open space without any shade, so carry an umbrella or wear a cap/hat.
• There’re not any good hangout places or eating places on the Hampi side so staying on the Hampi island side has some advantages.  The disadvantage was that you have to get back to the island by 6pm and you can’t start very early to start your tour.  Main thing is that you don’t get beer on the Hampi side but you feel out of place if you don’t beer on the Hampi island side.
  
• It is a good idea to book the places in advance on long weekends.  I had to ask each and every guest house on the Hampi island side for a room, spent more than hour and overpaid for the room.
• You can catch the bus to Hampi from the train station or from the bus station.  The ride is about 30-45 minutes.
  
• It is a good idea to rent the bicycle to go around Hampi.  You won’t be able to rent motor cycles in Hampi or won’t be able to bring the motorcycle from the Hampi island.

Don't Miss

• Climb up the Matunga hill to see the panoramic view, you will be able to see miles and miles of boulder on one side and greenery on the other side of the river.
  
• In the Hampi island, in the evenings people hangout in the hill playing music and dancing.  To get there, go on the straight road after you get off of the boat and after 10 minutes walk, you will see a bunch of people sitting on the boulders.  There’s no way you would miss them.  It was fun watching the sunset with the nice music.

My Journey

Because of the last minute planning, I could get the train ticket only up to Guntakal and had to take two different buses to Hospet and it took me about 4 hours even though the bus journey was about 2.5 hours.  

Instead of destroying the whole structures, the Sultans damaged the god statues so that the temples can't be used for worship.  So all of the granite stone structures still intact but all of the wooden

structures burnt down by the Sultans.  This is the place where the god Rama met Hanuman and the monkeys from this monkey kingdom helped Rama to kick Ravana's butt.

Finding a Place to Stay

After walking around the Virupakshi temple for some time and booking the bicycle tour for the next day, decided to go to the Hampi island to find a place to stay.  There’s not a single place available to stay but there’s hut in a paddy field was available for Rs. 1000, I decided not to stay there because could not convince myself pay that kind of money to stay in a hut with the basic facilities.  When I decided to go back to Hampi to look for a home stay, I got lucky with a guest house because someone cancelled their room in a guest house in the Hampi island.  I know that I was getting over charged (Rs. 1000 for Rs. 700 place) but it had a nice room and good restaurant to hang out so took it.  Tried to hike to the Sun Set point at the end of the road but I didn’t see anyone there in that remote place, so decide to get back to the hotel to chill.

Bicycle Tour

Left early in the morning to explore Hampi before the bicycle tour

and walked around the Hampi bazar & the surrounding areas.  The bicycle tour supposed to start at 930am but by the time we got our bicycles and a group of people who were going along in the same tour figured out how to ride the bike, it was about 1030am.  The guide was good, we took our own time going around the places and the guide arranged for picnic lunch for the people whoever interested in the group (almost all of us).  My expectation of Hampi was that it’d be more like Kajerajoo but it’s mostly ruins.  Since I am more interested in the history and I really enjoyed even though there’s not many sculputres.    The tour ended around 4pm (it’s supposed to be from 930 to 2pm…so goes the Indian Stretchable Time), and after that I climbed the Matunga hill.  After reaching about 80% of the hike, got scared to climb the part of the hill where you walk along the edge.  There were few other guys from Hydrabad were also sitting and finally we decided to go up, but it was not that bad…the views from there amazing and it is very well worth the hike.  

This is supposed to be like the one on the left 

The crowd to get in the boat (no queue as usual) to go to Hampi island at 530pm was huge and somehow managed to get in the boat to reach the Hampi island before 6pm  Went straight to the hangout place mentioned by a couple of German guys in the bike tour, and it was fun.  People playing music and dancing ’til it was dark, stumbled down in the dark to reach the road with all others.

Marriage Counselor

Settled in a nice paddy field view seat in the restaurant, to be joined by a nice couple from Bangalore.  Not sure how it started, but when we started to discuss about the marriage and living together, they started talking about their dilemma.  In their case, they were living together for two years and the girl is afraid to get married and don’t want children but the guy wants to get married to have children.  So we all started to talk about different people I know of and what they did, what I did and

what they are thinking of, the discussions went on ’til 1am.  The more beer we started to have, the discussion was getting very personal and the restaurant guy had to kick us out at 1am, we split after exchanging our contact details.  I was very careful not to open my mouth too much (because I know about my self :-) ) but was just listening.  There’re no conflicts and different point of views exchanged.  Nice couple and hope they make the right decision and have a happy life.

Walking To Vittala Temple

During my stay in Hampi, I was eating my breakfast on the roadside places because none of the places were open for breakfast at 8am.  The last day, walked to the Vittala temple that’s about 2km from the bus stand but everyone keep saying that it’s only 1km from the bus stand so plan for a long walk without any shade but it is well worth it.  Got a guide in the temple and he’s not that good but tried to overcharge me and after

checking with someone, I went back collected the money above the official guide charge.  Met a couple from Hydrabad and with them we were trying to get the coracle to get back but there’re no coracle waiting so had to walk back.  The other option is to take auto from the Vittala temple for Rs 200 to get back to the town.  On the way, met a guy who quit engineering, that his parents forced to study, and got into photography to have some interesting discussion.

Left Hampi around 1pm after having lunch to reach the railway station around 145pm.   I was afraid that the train may not be on-time, but I was lucky that the train was only 15 minute late and I was able to catch my connecting train without any issues.  

Overall, it was a great trip and enjoyed meeting interesting people, and the overall Hampi experience is different from what I expected.

Short Trip to Kancheepuram

Suggestions

• All of the temples close between 1pm to 4pm.  The Sankara Mutt  
• The trip to Kancheepuram is a day trip from Chennai.

Things that made me Mad

• The temples are not in huge size but they are one of the oldest temples in South India with a lot of great sculptures, one of the greatest work is stone chain, about six feet long, that is
  
  made with one single stone.  The hallways are made with great precision and awesome workmanship.   
• The thing that made me was the sign indicating that the non-hindus are not allowed to go beyond certain part of the temple.  In Hinduism there is no ceremony done to make one Hindu (no baptism or no Islam conversion process), so how one can say someone is Hindu !  The people at the temple were asking the white guys from going into the temple.  Wondering why these idiots go about building in the
  
  temples in the foreign countries and didn't have the balls to stop the non-Hindus from going into the temple.  The way the guys behave in the temple is very irritating.
• There is a golden lizard in the Vaigundaperumal temple and touching or seeing the lizard will remove the bad luck (dhosham) and bring prosperity.
• The murals in the Vaigundaperumal temple were not maintained well and people written their name over the murals that're more than 500 years old.  There was a long line to get into the main sanneedhi, the queue was formed in
  
  the hot sun instead making use of the shaded area in that area. 
• Even though we started from Chennai very early in the morning around 515am to reach the Kamatchi temple before 7am, we were able to cover only three temples before 1pm.  Kancheepuram is not a interesting town and there's nothing interesting other than the temples.