Hello... We're in Hubli? (plus photos!)

1 correction:
1) German Bakery IS in Lonely Planet guidebook, but the description hardly does the most fantastic health food restaurant in Goa any justice.

We decided it was time to leave Goa... We're hoping to make it to an all night dance and music festival in Bangalore on Feb 1st, so we had 4 days to find something random and fun. At first we wanted to go to Hampi to see beautiful temples, but turns out a very important person will be in Hampi for the 3 days we wanted to be there, and EVERY restaurant and guest house is closed. Crazy! So instead we looked through Lonely Planet, and decided to take a 6 hour bus to Hubli, which has only a little paragraph written about it i the guide book, and not much else. Turns out Hubli was a very good choice! It's a bit like Mangalore, really laid back, a nice mix of cosmopolitan and not (so far we have not seen a single foreigner either). We were also craving Indian food again, and we had some of the best thali (all you can eat vegetables, dal, rice, chapati, YUM) ever. Our hotel is really nice, with a balcony outside our room and there are lots of Tibetan monks staying there because a Tibetan settlement is just 15 Km away (ie: 1 hour drive.. Gotta love Indian roads). Tomorrow we'll go there, and then tomorrow evening we may go to a tiny town up in nortern Karnataka (about 4 hours away) where there is a big dance festival featuring lots of dancers from around the country. Who knew? Things are falling into place nicely. Here are some photos from our past adventures!
Here are some beautiful pieces from one of the stalls on the way to the beach. Can't say I miss the constant haggling and "yes madam come look my shop" everywhere I walk.
Here's the gang! From left to right is me, Santosh (one of the yoga teachers and fantastic friend!), Richard (from Switzerland), Liz (from Chicago and attended Mount Madonna, and we're also excited to meet up with her hopefully in Thailand!), Alkilesh (one of the yoga teachers + he taught me Reiki, and another fantastic friend!), Jake (or as Santosh calls him, Wolverine). We're all eating yummy homecooked food at our place!
This is me running into the water at sunset. Just a nice shot of the Arabian sea and of course the beautiful sky.

This is Puja, our new and dear friend from couchsurfing! She is from Detroit, has been living in India for the past few months, and was travelling through Goa, so we met up and spent our last days in Anjuna together. She and Jake tried to ride motorbikes to Arambol beach, but to no avail (they're apparently harder to ride than they look!) Also, that's German Bakery in the background, our day and night hang out!