almost got

...

so its bangalore station, big and noisy and late evening, a two hour holdover between train from chennai and train to hospet for hampi… an unwise three Indian trains in one day

so we, hungryish, come out station and head for nearest restaurant and get steered to back of busy room and sit down and order, and its hassly, with bright lights and people talking loudly behind my ear, so I’m jumpy, and after we order our great jaipuri veg and so on, this English guy off same train sits down on one side of me and , on the other, i'm simultaneously aware my bag, or the chair with my bag on it, is moving away at 1mm a second, and that some young guy to my right is doing it with his feet, and I feel pretty stared at and so take bag off chair, and ten seconds later the bloke next me stands up and says his bag has been nicked, its got his passport etc, and dashes out cos there’s only one long way out the place, and it’s a long way, and I realise there must’ve been at least two of them, the guy to my right who was either testing my heavy laptopped bag for weight or simply edging it out of my sight, and the guy next Priscilla who swiftly after the failure on my bag stood up and took the English guy’s bag with him… and that they probably followed us into the restaurant cos we look like easy marks

so the english guy’s a tad stuffed. and so wasn’t on our next train and we, we had a close shave

...

hampi, boulders

very boulders

more boulders than any boulders have bouldered before
boulders carved into bull and elephant gods
another tourist zone, filthy and bugiferous
but with boulders
roads winding between boulders, houses squeezed between boulders, mandapams and mini-temples on top of boulders, beside boulders, below boulders, boulders in a line, boulders on the skyline, boulders scattered across the landscape
random boulders being very boulders
big boulders
much more boulders than boulder colorado
butterball boulders on flat rocks
extra big boulders
boulders
...