Week Twelve - Off to Hampi: Ganesh Everywhere, Tonic Nowhere

I had no idea birthdays were such a big deal in India. Gen and I started mine with brunch at Café Eclat, which has become particularly important to us because it is one of the few places we have found where you can buy what we would call real bread. I had a wonderful mango smoothie with breakfast, and we brought home a slice of actual carrot cake for later. Gen bought me beautiful highball glasses with embossed gold filigree, perfect for G&Ts on our balcony and eventually the bar back home. Jack bought me a solid brass Ganesh paperweight. I love them both.

Then, because my working day starts later in India, I went into the office that evening. Apparently this was completely unacceptable. My team kept asking why I was there. I explained that it was my birthday, not a national holiday, which did not help my case. Eventually they basically kicked me out and told me to go home. I am beginning to understand that in India, showing up for work on your birthday is viewed somewhere between mildly concerning and evidence of poor judgement. So I went home and we ate the carrot cake.

Gen's week has settled into what now passes for normal life in Hyderabad: a walk with one group of expat ladies, coffee at someone's house with another, some baby cuddling at the orphanage, squash with our coach and monkey yoga. She has also started bringing kibble to the botanical gardens, although she quickly discovered that the yoga group, like a surprising number of people we've met in India, doesn't particularly love dogs. So the kibble is now for the walk home. The dogs are indifferent to the change in strategy as long as there is kibble.

By Friday it was time for another road trip, this time to Hampi. Before moving to India, I had never heard of Hampi. It was once the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire, one of the great kingdoms of southern India. Today more than 1,600 surviving monuments are scattered across an enormous landscape of temples, palaces, bazaars, ancient water systems and huge piles of boulders. It's now one of those places I can't believe I didn't know existed.

It's about 375 kilometres from Hyderabad, a distance my Canadian brain thinks should take a few hours. In India it took seven. We've come to expect this. A shepherd moves his herd across the road, a market spills onto it, a cow decides to stand in it, or at this time of year a giant Ganesh appears on it on the way to an immersion. Google Maps remains wildly optimistic about all of these things.

On Friday, two Ganeshes did.

The first was a huge Ganesh being pulled along the road on a tractor trailer. So naturally I asked our Ganesh to pull over so I could take pictures of the Ganesh procession pulling a Ganesh.

I realize we're reaching peak Ganesh here.

I still haven't mastered the art of quietly entering a scene in India and documenting it unnoticed. Usually the foreigner enters from stage left and within eight seconds everyone has forgotten what they were doing and we're taking group selfies. Gen, Jack and Vishal got out to watch. It was only afterward that Gen pointed out she had been the only woman anywhere near the crowd. As usual, I hadn't noticed. I don't think these are her favourite experiences.

A little farther down the road we found another procession. Everyone was covered in bright orange powder, so obviously I asked Ganesh to pull over again. I ran ahead, turned around and started photographing them coming toward me.

For perhaps five seconds, this worked exactly as planned.

Then they noticed me.

The group erupted. Everyone started shouting, waving and posing. This was photography gold. Then someone grabbed me. Then several people grabbed me. At this point the objective of the Ganesh procession seemed to change. The new priority was getting as much orange powder onto the foreigner as humanly possible.

I was pulled into the crowd while trying to protect my camera and continue taking pictures, which is harder than it sounds when several enthusiastic men are rubbing orange powder onto your head, face and clothing. From the car, Gen, Jack, Vishal and Ganesh watched me disappear into the crowd.

Eventually I emerged, camera intact and looking like I'd been fired out of a giant bag of Cheetos.

They succeeded.

So did I. The pictures are fantastic.

We arrived in Hampi and checked into our respective hotels. Ganesh and Vishal were staying nearby, and I always worry that we haven't put them somewhere decent. Soon afterward I got a thumbs-up message: "The place is excellent, sir."

Good, because ours wasn't.

It looked nice enough but was shabby around the edges. Order a gin and tonic and discover there is no tonic. Gen can confirm that gin and cranberry juice is not an acceptable substitute. Her massage therapist arrived an hour late. Getting a pool towel required the patience normally reserved for obtaining an Indian business visa. I know this from direct experience. The food was decent, though, and we hadn't come to Hampi for the hotel. I generally drink beer, which presented the usual marital problem: Gen didn't want a beer, but apparently she did want mine. I believe the technical term for this arrangement is marriage.

The hotel did do one thing very well. They connected us with Ramesh, an excellent local guide. We'd sent him our wildly optimistic list of temples, monuments, palaces, baths and possibly a coracle ride, and he basically said, sure. The plan was to start together, let Jack see some of Hampi, and then Vishal could take him back for an afternoon at the pool while we carried on.

The next morning we all met up and hit the temples. Hampi is extraordinary. Some are still active places of worship while others survive as ruins, so you don't feel as though you're simply walking through an archaeological site. People have been coming here to worship for centuries and still do.

We asked Ganesh to come with us, and he seemed genuinely surprised. When we ask Ganesh or Vishal to join us, there is sometimes a moment where they don't quite know how to process the request. There is a line they seem to feel they should stay on one side of, while we keep pulling them across it. With another family, Ganesh might have driven everyone to the temple and been asked to wait in the car park. Instead, we keep telling him to park the car and come with us. I suspect we're confusing him.

Ganesh had never been to Hampi. He is quite a devout man, and seeing the temples through his eyes made the day much more interesting. We were looking at history and architecture. He was seeing those things too, but he was also there to worship and receive blessings. Ramesh explained aspects of Hindu life that we see around us every day, including family deities passed through generations and the meaning behind some of the markings people wear on their foreheads. Suddenly things we've been looking at for almost three months had more context.

At some temples we received blessings ourselves, moving our hands over the flame three times and then toward our faces. These are some of my favourite experiences in India. Sometimes you are very obviously the foreign visitor with the camera. Other times someone just shows you what to do and, for a few minutes, you get to participate. I'm still usually the foreigner doing it slightly wrong, but progress is progress.

One of the most spectacular stops was the Stone Chariot at Vittala Temple, a shrine built to resemble a ceremonial chariot and dedicated to Garuda, the mount of Vishnu. The stonework throughout the complex is incredible, and the chariot has become such an important symbol of Hampi that it appears on India's ₹50 note.

Later we moved into the royal areas, including Lotus Mahal and Queen's Bath, which meant another instalment of something I have become weirdly obsessed with in India: ancient plumbing. The Vijayanagara builders had elaborate systems of wells, channels and aqueducts moving water around the city. At the royal complex, water and airflow were even used to cool the buildings. Ancient AC, several hundred years before anyone had to argue with Gen about the thermostat.

The Queen's Bath was particularly beautiful. Water travelled from kilometres away, sediment was allowed to settle, and cleaner water eventually flowed into the huge bathing pool. Instead of Hindu gods, the building has floral designs and Indo-Islamic architecture. This was where the queen and her ladies could bathe, relax and presumably post heavily filtered pictures on ancient Instagram. #QueenLife #NoMenAllowed.

After the tour, Ramesh took us to a local craft shop. Gen found a beautiful shawl woven from banana fibre. I found something I absolutely did not need but immediately knew was coming home with us.

Another Ganesh.

This one is incredible. It weighs more than a kilogram and is made from seven metals, including copper, silver, gold, zinc and iron. The design is unlike any we've seen. His trunk and one arm are the same form, a single piece flowing from one into the other. After nearly three weeks of Ganesh festivals, processions, immersions and statues, it seemed like the perfect thing to eventually bring home and remind us of it all.

We now own a lot of Ganesh.

By afternoon we needed a strategic hotel stop for beer and fries. I invited Ganesh to join me for lunch and again got the awkward "I will sit here, sir, you and mam sit there." He eventually joined me, but I could tell he was uncomfortable, so I took my beer and fries and went looking for Gen. Sometimes inclusion apparently requires knowing when to leave someone alone with his lunch.

Then we collected Vishal and Jack and headed for Daroji Sloth Bear Sanctuary. Sloth bears are native to the Indian subcontinent: shaggy black bears with long snouts and serious claws designed for tearing apart termite mounds. They look like someone started building a normal bear, got distracted halfway through and just went with it. They also look remarkably cuddly, which is unfortunate because they absolutely are not.

We invited Ganesh and Vishal along for the 14-kilometre drive through the sanctuary. We saw lizards, peacocks, birds and hares, and at one point, bouncing along the dirt track, Ganesh commented that the road reminded him of the village where he grew up.

I loved that. Neither he nor Vishal would likely have done this on their own, and increasingly some of my favourite parts of these trips are watching them experience something new alongside us. I am fairly certain "sloth bear safari" wasn't in either of their job descriptions.

Eventually we reached the bears, which were out on the rocks eating the jaggery mixture put out by the rangers. They were shaggy, fuzzy and extremely cute.

Jack wanted to pet one.

No.

He asked again. Still no. Unfortunately things unravelled from there. India has actually been amazing for Jack, far better in many ways than we could have predicted, but we still have moments. This was one of them. It took about half an hour to get things settled again, and by then the bears had finished eating and disappeared. Jack was very apologetic afterward. Sometimes we understand what triggers these moments and sometimes we never really know. This was one of the latter.

For the record, the answer to "Can I pet the sloth bear?" will remain no. This is one parenting decision on which Gen and I are completely aligned.

Dinner back at the hotel was great, and the next morning we were ready for something considerably calmer: Ayurvedic massages, including warm oil and ghee slowly poured over the forehead and scalp. It sounds bizarre. It is actually hypnotic, mesmerizing and ridiculously relaxing.

Mine was booked for 8 a.m. Gen's was at 9. Mine happened. Gen's did not.

Her therapist didn't show up, was double-booked, or had simply entered a higher plane of consciousness and become unavailable for appointments. After the late massage the day before, the missing tonic, the elusive pool towels and now the disappearing therapist, Gen had reached her limit.

Which is how I emerged from an Ayurvedic massage in a state of profound inner peace and was immediately put to work writing a bad Google review.

India giveth.

And Gen giveth one star.

At least Ganesh got us home.

The driver, that is.

The other one weighs more than a kilogram and was packed in my luggage.

The flagstaff and carved gateway at Virupaksha Temple, Hampi…!

Ganesh, Ganesh, Ganesh….