Hampi

I knew as soon as I entered the place. I am a village girl at heart. The wonderful smell of fresh cowdung, covering the floors outside every house, like a rough carpet, cool to the soles of the feet. People whose language I knew as my own. Bullock carts on narrow roads. Trees.

Where we stayed, the back was just fields, and you had to pass the buffaloes to get to the edge of the fields. I spoke to the buffaloes. They seemed happy. Five of them, two being calves.

I went past the haystack and found myself a comfortable spot on a rock just beneath a lean tree. And I sat there, my eyes closed, facing the green that was unlike any other green I had seen before. I shut my eyes and sat, feeling the warmth of the sun on my face, hearing the sounds of the birds that the wind gently brought to my ears. My skin felt like it was glowing. It was the best time I have spent with myself.

We went to the ruins. The old temples, the old buildings. Took countless pictures. But despite all the laughter that was floating around the group, I felt separate from the rest. The old buildings drew me to them, beckoning. See what so many in the past have seen, they said. The stones, rough to my touch. I could feel how intricate the carvings were beneath my light fingertips.
I could imagine, how centuries ago, people would have sat, laughed, touched, and built these. In my mind, the picture transformed, and I saw how they would have been when they were the present, when they knew the people who had built them, in their days of glory, when people were not coming to look at them, but lived them. I could have spent hours, just looking, just touching, just smelling, just imagining. I could have lived those lives, I thought. I wish I had lived those buildings in all their grandeur. I wish their beauty was a part of me, and I was a part of their time. All I can do now is imagine and marvel. I could spend hours, no days, just being there, with the knowledge that this piece of stone has seen so many like me, seen so many lifetimes flit past... so many, that the decades and centuries may have been only seconds.

I cannot begin to describe just how relaxing the trip was. I did not want to leave. I wanted to live in the fields, watching the sunrise, drinking in the fresh air, smelling the cowdung and hearing the birds be their carefree selves. I want to really live where there is life, both old and new. The combination of the fresh and young with the wise and crumbling. Hampi is beautiful.