India

Buying fruit to get the directions to the secret lake

Hampi was both the final destination of this trip and of my journey in India. It was a fantastic village where we would zoom around on mopeds during the day, which would lose in terms of speed to a lawnmower, and gather with all the backpackers from the village on a series of rocks for sunset, joints, and hippie music in the evening. On one of those evenings, we heard about the existence of a “secret lake.“

The next day, we followed the instructions meticulously to find the lake. Our moped took us to the bend in the road with the big tree and a bench underneath. On the other side, there was indeed a man selling freshly squeezed fruit. We bought some fruit and chatted with him, which was a prerequisite before he would give us the directions to the “secret lake”. He certainly didn‘t give this information to just any passerby. And our chat seemed sufficient because when we dared to ask for directions to the “secret lake” after half an hour of socializing, he gave us the final and missing set of directions. That last afternoon in India, we spent at this magical place in this even more magical country.



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