Prelude



There’s a woman in the seat in front of mine. She is heavily decked; a bright yellow veil lined with 25-paise coins, broad off-white bangles around her wrist, up her arms that disappear under the veil, ear lobe and nostrils pierced with a zillion dull red and gold trinkets. I itch for my camera, but I cringe to be the ‘tourist’. It’s hot. The van we are in somewhere in north-west Karnataka inches along at a snail’s pace. The driver is a young hot-blooded adolescent of 16; his cell phone is smartly wired into a cheap but very effective amp and speakers. He obviously enjoys being in control; he drives at less than walking pace while treating us to ear-splitting Kannada film numbers. The speakers are right above my ears and suddenly I want to shriek. He smirks as my friend and I first plead with him and then scream at him to reduce the volume. Thankfully, the others in the van join us and he tries to stare us down as he first reduces, increases and then pretends to reduce the volume again. Deliverance, we hit the next little town, as dusty and backward-looking as every other town we’ve encountered so far where a more adult-looking driver takes over and our young friend joins us in the cabin of the van, only to intermittently throw “I’d-burn-you-if-I-could” looks towards us. I am sure you would not want to hear much more of the unpleasantness that formed a significant part of my trip, but somewhere I take solace in the commonly held belief that traveling with all its discomforts and surprises is what differentiates a traveler from a mere tourist. I, dear reader, finally was a traveler, sometimes longing for tourist comforts like reasonably decent food, a reasonably priced room, umm… reasonably decent food and people who did not look at my friend and I as cash on two legs. Over the course of four days, I figured I was in this, as in most other things, something in between; neither a tourist nor a traveler!

The modified Matador grey-green van picks up speed; we move along a dusty road lined by brown, red, black dusty fields, past dusty towns leaving a trail of angry brown-red dust in our wake. The road could be better, but the potholes are not too bad; it’s the speed that’s making my teeth rattle.

Presently, the soundtrack grows better; a smile finds its way to my lips. Peace. Everything is as it should be. I am happy. A host of sunflowers breaks the monotony of red, black and brown soil framed through the window. I realize I am happy. And the long moment fades away leaving a pleasant aftertaste.

Stunning fields of sunflower garnish this land that seems loath to yield much of its wealth to anyone. I racked my brain to remember my Geography lessons – were we in the sunflower belt of India? Got to look that one up! As a matter of fact got to look up a lot of things! Indian history, for instance. I know we studied a specific period of Indian history in each year, culminating in the glories of our freedom struggle in tenth grade. Apart from some famous names and random dates, I realize I do not know much now.

Alright, before you lose patience and click away to the next glossy hyperlink, let me tell you what this is all about. Oh man, what is this about? Well, it’s about this four-day trip that a friend and I embarked on with some very inadequate scheduling and planning to somewhere in north-west Karnataka? Actually, it’s a history/archaeology/architecture lesson stretching from 500AD to the 17th century? Maybe an account of a 4-day escape from our clichéd city lives that had stabbed and wounded us a little too much as we made our way around some sharp corners? Wait, let me wrestle that drama queen bit of me to the ground…&%&*)&_)*&^^$^$(*)… uggh, done! I am glad you did not have to see that. Oh well, it’s just a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but mostly an excuse to write something that I hope will stand the ravages of time and stand out as one lone woman’s quest to find the truth in a world gone awry, a world lost in filth and depravity!! :-) You get the drift, no?

Change is good. Changing jobs is better. A two-week break between jobs is the best of all. It started as a trip to Singapore, wait, was it Italy? Well, I am not sure yet, but I zeroed in on Badami-Aihole-Pattadakkal with Hampi thrown in as an after-thought. After all, what could be more fun than being slow-toasted to a nice brown crunchy consistency in the North Kanara sun? The summer had started earlier than usual and my companion on this trip, let’s call her L, and I made some unhurried last minute preparations for the trip. We were headed to Badami via Hubli, with Days 1 and 2 spent at Badami-Aihole-Pattadakkal. We would then head down south and east to spend Day 3 and 4 at Hampi to take in the ruined splendor that Vijayanagara is today, thus fulfilling a promise made to myself in July’08 to return to this place that at first sight, robbed me of adjectives to describe it. Apparently I was not the first person in history to be dumbstruck by Vijayanagara and hence ended up writing really long sentences! A whole number of famous old travellers mention the sheer magnificience and splendour of this place. Vijayanagar’s riches continue to support a tourist-centric economy and a number of well meaning researchers, including a certain John and George who have made their living studying this place, writing a few authoritative books on the subject in the process. It was with their book in hand that we would set out to explore Hampi, but I am getting ahead of myself. That story for later.

First stop, Bengaluru railway station to catch the Rani Channamma Express to Kolhapur. Our destination, the city of Hubli, known for pretty much nothing major I guess. Well, a little research tells me it has a number of small industries. Our coupe companions on the ‘express train’ were mostly 55+ and aggressive-looking. There was fierce-looking North Indian with a spare thumb on his left hand, his well-maintained wife (pedicured, manicured, polished fingernails in place), an old guy who could have only been a file-pushing bureaucrat, another boring old South Indian couple, and a young boy in his late teens. Predictably, extra-finger man wanted to pull down the middle berth immediately after dinner as the train was pulling out of the railway station. Predictably, L didn’t take to this too kindly, especially since she has a thing against aggressive North Indians (surprising coming from her since she was almost North Indian herself). A hot exchange of words followed with Extra Thumb storming off to find the TT among rants around, predictably again, “disrespectful and unreasonable youngsters these days” and I silently despaired – our trip was off to a very promising start indeed. Nothing irritates me more than people who demand respect rather than command it. We stood near the train door for a while as more people stepped out to talk to us less out of concern and more out of curiosity! Ah, we Indians!! Our berths were near the door, this meant that we had to listen to the groan of the door opening and closing about 1052 times!

Almost there

Red-eyed but thrilled, the unpleasant events of the previous night forgotten, we landed in Hubli at sunrise. Before the trip, I vowed to survive with just my pidgin Kannada through these four days. So I unleashed a stream of disconnected Kannada phrases on a friendly-looking, unsuspecting auto driver. The idea was to figure out how, when and where we could get a bus to Badami from Hubli. This must have been very disorienting for him at 5.30 in the morning; however, he was gracious enough to take us all the way to the new bus stand at Hubli where a squat old time-keeper with glasses delicately balanced at the tip of his nose told us that we’d have to wait till 9.00 AM. A little more prodding, pidgin Kannada firmly in place with L’s Hindi to help, and we figured that we had to catch a bus to Bijapur and get a connecting bus to Badami from Kozhdigeri cross. L and I idly practiced the name a little, swirling and twirling our tongues around the ‘dzhi’ in Kozhdigeri as we waited for the 6.45 to Bijapur. The bus swirled into the station as a violet horizon gave way to mundane blue. Accompanied by one more old man in a Nehru cap, the driver and the conductor, we made our way to the old bus stand closer to the railway station where the crowds slowly poured in. Soon we were chugging our way to Kozhdigeri cross. The cool morning air gave way to a hot summer sun, mercifully, the breeze stayed cool and comforting. We made our way through a number of similar-looking little village bus stands. The NWKRTC is good fun if you believe that the journey matters more than the destination. Or if money matters to you. Bus tickets are relatively cheap; the land passes by your window at a dignifying pace that masks the poverty and want, allowing you to take a comforting and romanticized view of what many of us would classify as the ‘old’ way of life.

It was tremendous fun to be figuring out our way as we went along, more so since none of my trips had ever been so unplanned. We reached K cross in 2.5 hours and were immediately confronted by a small maxi-cab like vehicle – a tam-tam – that was on its way to Badami, almost fully loaded. Momentary hesitation, but in the spirit of doing something different we clambered in. We chose to sit at the back and the supremely thrilled ‘conductor’ cleared out the place for us. We stuck out like sore thumbs and enjoyed being the cynosure of all eyes for a short while. The local women of these parts seem to be pretty feisty – oh wait, there I go committing the folly that all travel-bloggers do – generalizing from just one isolated experience! At least the woman who shared the back compartment with us was very feisty. She demanded to know what two young women like us were doing all alone, and responded with an ‘aiyyya’ when we told her we were headed to Badami, alone. Bad people there, she told us in Marathi. Find someone good and stick to them, she said. We nodded and smiled our thanks. She grew a little shy as we clicked a picture of her but was positively thrilled with the results when I showed her the digicam preview.

We were in north-west Karnataka, pretty close to the border of Maharashtra. And as you move along the borders of the Indian states, it’s fascinating to see languages get mixed up, evolve and transition to something else with a life of its own. I had encountered a lilting dialect of Kannada-Tamil-Malayalam at Masinagudi, a little town situated at the border of Kerala, Tamilnadu and Karnataka. Now, in the sunflower farmlands near Badami, a neat cocktail of Marathi, Konkani, Kannada…and was that a hint of Tulu? It makes me wonder again whether its sheer ignorance of our differences that keeps this country together.

Almonds and Badami

Almonds and Badami have little in common. We are in another dusty little town with horse-drawn Tongas thundering alongside Enfield Bullets. It’s the typical one-bank Indian town, and it seems to have immunized itself to the changes that usually accompany tourism. The effect tourism has had on this town is limited to Badami’s children, auto drivers and hotels. The children are extremely curious - redeemed only by the fact that their curiosity is mostly innocent and very rarely intrusive. They all want to know your name, where you are from, guide you to the temples or take you to their school. Very few want chocolates or your money, a contrast to what we were to see in Hampi. The auto drivers and hotel owners mostly want your money in return for poor service. Anyway, freshly laundered sheets and a working toilet is what we needed and we got that.

The famous Badami caves are a short auto ride from the town’s bus stand.

Picture huge, vertical sandstone cliffs, more pillars than cliffs actually. Wait, no… bigger, much bigger. Photos on the Internet do not prepare you for the sheer enormity of the red sandstone formations you encounter as you walk in to the gated compound. Strange geology again – mysteries of the Deccan plateau. The enormous sandstone formations in Badami, the boulders of Hampi, the smaller boulders of Gingee further south, all created due to water erosion over millions of years? The first three caves are dedicated to Vishnu/Siva and a fourth is dedicated to the Jain saints. While religious intolerance and the resulting wars ravaged the Holy Land, the Chalukyas, after a few successful conquests, had realized that there was little use for war. There was no ‘tolerance’; there was peaceful co-existence and acceptance. I am free to speculate since I am blissfully unaware of anyone’s Ph.D. thesis on this.

Back to the caves! There are Gods, Goddesses, there are forms of Siva and Vishnu together – Harihara, there is man and woman together – Ardhanareeswara, there is the fearsome all-powerful Goddess – Mahishasuramardhini. Acrobatic poses, generously endowed, women with graceful curves and gravity-defying bosoms that would give any woman a complex. Maybe there are a million stories around, but to my untrained eye, they are just mute stone witnesses to a rich era that we in India have stolidly left behind. For a huge section of the visiting noisy schoolchildren, the monkeys and we are more interesting than the sculptures and caves. They watch us as they watch the monkeys too; eyes and mouths wide open in wonder. At least the monkeys seem to elicit some laughter among them.

Distance lends enchantment to the view; it certainly doles out generous doses of it to the Agastya Theertha tank far below. It is beautiful, emerald like. From the fourth Jaina cave right on top, the green waters are inviting; buffaloes, naked kids and women washing laundry surround it and I definitely did not feel like touching the water once I had gone down to the pond. Tipu Sultan was quite enamored too; he visited here and then promptly built an imposing fort right on top of the rock face. It’s beyond me how these people had the energy and desire to scale sheer vertical faces to build more sheer vertical walls on top.

Badami bears the imposing weight of history resting on its sandstone shoulders - the Chalukyas, Hoysalas, Rashtrakutas, Marathas, the Deccan Sultans, Vijayanagaras, the British all controlled this little city and its surrounding black soil over the course of 1400 years. The Chalukyas held court for somewhere between 200 and 300 years – only once around 630 AD was Badami or Vatapi, as it was known then, ravaged by the Pallavas of Mahabalipuram from down South. A grand love story revolving around this is immortalized by Kalki in his “Sivagamiyin Sabadham”.

The monkeys here are naughty. We sit back at the first cave and watch them. The cool stones are tempting – we lie back. A big stone snake with a human head stares back at us from the ceiling – Adisesha. It’s quiet now – all our noisy and nosy friends have wandered up to the other caves. There’s no one around. It’s one of those ‘golden daffodils’ moments – we’ll return to it in many a ‘vacant or pensive mood’. The security guard disturbs our silent reverie. “Don’t sleep here”, he screams. We say we just want to look at the ceiling. I sit up. I watch a lone monkey clamber up the rocks towards us, eyeing us carefully. He makes his way around the stone pillars, circling in closer. Finally, he sits about 3 feet away from me. He makes a lunge for my bag just a nanosecond after I tighten my grip on it. A threatening growl, L shouts, the monkey retreats. I swear I heard it say ‘you big goddamn monkey’ to me! :-) The monkey incident makes us clear out to where we would not be so alone.

We puzzled over some of the postures, weaponry, instruments that the Gods were portrayed with, I wonder what their Gods would have looked like if they had had weapons of today - no need for 16 hands, just one hand holding a nuke warhead maybe? More awesomely endowed women with their handsome looking men surround us. Forget the controversy over Barbie’s proportions; if Chalukyan women had to aspire to these impossible standards set by these temple beauties, eating disorders must have been dime a dozen in 600 AD. And did they actually go about topless and such minimal clothing, we wonder? At the fourth cave, finally overcome by the happenings of the day, we lie back on the stones again. The sky was much bluer than I thought it could be; green, red, blue, white hot sun, colors and patterns merge as I fall into peaceful slumber for 30 minutes.

I woke up to see L asleep a couple of feet away. We headed around to the tank down below, encountered some more sweet curious school kids, and visited the museum – fascinating history lessons for Rs.2 only. It houses a lot of interesting artifacts predating the time of the Chalukyas. Ancient stone tools, pottery shards, photos of age-old cave paintings around Badami are a must-see. One more interesting display is a lovely sculpture of Lajja Gauri – as much a sexual symbol as of fertility. L and I are amazed at the openly sexual nature of this deity, who is still revered in a few temples in the area. Further research reveals that the worship of Lajja Gauri is most probably Hinduism’s way of assimilating the Mother Goddess cults that existed in these areas before the rise of Hinduism.
The Bhootanatha temple stands at the end of the tank - much smaller as if built for people whose average height was 4 feet. My Ray-Bans could not handle the heat; the right lens inexplicably fell off its frame, hitting the stone floor with an interesting musical twang. Hmm. We headed back, hungry and sun burnt. We took the inside route through the poorer quarter of Badami – I do not want to call it a slum. Women gossiping, a naked kid going into head-to-head battle with a goat, someone filling water into green and red plastic pots - what a city dweller would picture as typical hot afternoon small town activities.  The thali meal served at the hotel was atrocious. We were famished and we wolfed it down nevertheless. The hotel guy offered us a taxi for 800 bucks for the whole of next day to cover Aihole and Pattadakkal. We ran into a bunch of friendly Malayalee men at the Bangalore Bakery opposite our hotel. After some conversation in English, we detected the Mallu twang in their speech. Our roots came in handy as we enquired in Malayalam on taxi rates; of course Rs.800 was atrocious. We decided to stick to the tam-tams and vans and buses that we were told run through these places very frequently. It took us till the next afternoon to realize that ‘frequently’ is a very relative term.

Ah, Malaprabha!

7.30 AM on Day 2 found us all up and about looking for a bus to Pattadakkal. Pattadakkal is one street big – at the end of this street, on the left side is the temple complex. A few houses are carelessly strewn around. Agriculture is big – the tractors are as well decorated as cows are during their harvest festivals. The Malaprabha adds a much needed dose of character to the town. The only food you get is sweaty Dairy Milk chocolate, (it’s melted, frozen, re-melted and re-re-melted and re-frozen in the heat) Krackjack biscuits, tender coconut water and chai-coffee. Ali’s little blue shop at the corner of the bus-stop serves upma in the afternoons. We helped ourselves to some excellent tea and reasonably good coffee at Ali’s. Fresh from the stove, served in big glasses. Very, very good tea. Not so bad coffee!


Pattadakkal, a guide in Aihole told us, was like the ‘university’ for sculpture and architecture. As we step into the immaculately maintained lawns of the temple complex – entry Rs.2 – I catch my breath. I’ve seen some of the great temples of Tamilnadu, and the unabashed black stone beauty of the Belur and Halebid temples. I’d seen some of the wonderful Vijayanagara temples. This place is a different ball game altogether. Never have I seen a whole cluster of beautiful temples, so pleasing to the eye, so inviting, all heaped together within such a small radius. All crowded together, each with its distinctive style. Experimentation? A school of sculpture? The remains of a centuries old temple-building competition


Lingams and Nandis are all over the place – you have to watch out so you don’t accidentally step on one. Two beautiful, curvilinear structures stand out in the crowd. They are dimly reminiscent of the towers of Angkor Wat, the Vishnu temple in Cambodia built in the 11th Century by Suryavarman the Second.

The Pattadakkal temples, I read later was testing ground for most of the temple architecture in Karnataka in the hundreds of years to come. More amorous couples, magnificent sculptures of Vishnu, Surya, stories of the Puranas later, we come across a cute grinning God at the entrance way to one of the temples. He is guarding the entrance to this temple – and he is oh-so-cute! We click a picture of me grinning back at him. Here's a picture for your viewing pleasure! Doesn't he make you wanna grin back?

Most of the temples have Vishnu’s vehicle Garuda carved in the doorway, but inside the temples were lingas – proof that as Saivism slowly replaced Vaishnavism, Vishnu idols gave way to enormous lingams. We walk down to the banks of the Malaprabha to another temple adjacent to the complex. There are black-faced monkeys here with a lone security guard from SIS to keep them company. As the family grooms each other on the temple top, we make small talk with the guard. He is part of the same “International” private security company headquartered at Hospet. Oh yes, he used to work as a guard at our hotel in Badami before this. It’s not season yet, he says. Badami is not as popular as Hampi is on the international tourist/traveler map. It is however, firmly placed in the ‘summer vacation’ circuit. March-April-May are hot months for tourism here, he informs us. We rest on the cool stones for a while and make our way back to Ali’s blue shop to find our way to Aihole. The bus stop that was so crowded in the morning is almost deserted. The tam-tam driver wants to know if we want a ‘besal’ (special) service to Aihole – the price: 150 bucks. We choose to wait along side a healthy-looking black dog for more passengers to join us. An exhausting 40 minutes later, we are on our way in another tam-tam to Aihole, 13 kms from Patadakkal. Before you rush away, here's one more detail from a Pattadakkal pillar for you to admire!

The legends of Aihole


Carb-deprived, almost faint, we struggled on amidst sunflower fields and rocky land to Aihole. Getting around is difficult here, or maybe it is just slow. I remind myself that life is genuinely not in too much of a hurry in these parts; it is about 80kmph slower around here. Aihole was the first capital of the Chalukyas until they built so many temples that there was no place left for new houses. :-) Seriously. An old woman and her grand mom flag down our already full auto. The auto driver gestures to L to make room for her. L looks back bewildered. The old lady makes her way to the other side and sits on the floor of the auto. For those of you know what an auto-rickshaw is like, it’s easy to grasp what I mean when I say that every available and not-so-available inch of space in our tam-tam was utilized. The auto driver drops us off at the central temple complex. Once again, we see a cluster of temples housed within an ASI compound. Aihole, the ASI guide tells us in his accented English, was the primary school for sculptures. The place is simply littered with temples. I am serious. This small little town hosts anywhere between 120-130 temples in an approximately 7 km radius in addition to two cave temples in the hills around. The KSTDC property here has a neat loo complex a few feet away from its Mayura hotel, bar-attached. Too many men were enjoying their afternoon drink there and we quietly make our way back rather than step in and take the stares. The museum building inside the main temple complex of Aihole houses a clean but monkey-infested washroom too. None of them lunge for our bag this time, though one inquisitive creature did express interest in joining us inside the washroom.

Now, for the temples. The Durga temple is simply put, different. It is ‘apsidal’ in shape. I think they mean its kinda oval in shape. The guide we hire after a lot of haggling (Rs.100) tells us that the British-built Indian Parliament building is inspired by this temple. It seems plausible as we take in the unusually high base, the columns that encircle the temple and rise to the roof. He clarifies the reasons for the rather lame names of the temples around us. No Durga worship happened in this temple, he says. The British who surveyed the area gave it some convenient names. This temple, for instance, was near the durg or the fort wall, hence the ‘Durg or Durga’ temple; where they found an old mendicant by name Lad Khan is the Lad Khan temple; the Gowdas were found either living in or patronizing one called the Gowda temple now. The guide points to us iron bar reinforcements that hold the stones together, purportedly done by the Chalukyas. I am not completely convinced. Some of the temples are crumbling down and have been fenced off completely. Look closely at the roof of the temple in the picture - a style completely of its own unlike any other that you would have seen. The Gowda temple (or was it some other) has an imaginatively carved stone ladder. Rather precarious, but effective to get one up through a hole to the roof. We spot Hiranyakashyapa – another recurring theme, or maybe so because it’s one of the few things we ignorant ones easily recognize.

Search for food was definitely one of the overwhelming themes of our trip. Aihole offers very few options apart from potato chips and sweatier Dairy Milk. It offers even fewer options to get back to Badami. Unless you have your own private car, that is. We were even tempted to see if we could get some firangs to give us a ride back. An ASI parking supervisor took pity on us and we negotiated a fair 70 rupee trip back to Pattadakkal. Very fair, at 7 bucks a kilometer just like in Bangalore! We made the crazy cripple van tout at Pattadakkal very happy by getting into his van. And a noisy ride later we were back in Badami. Our search for food took us to Badami Court – the food is nothing to write home about. After a lesson on the dangers of ordering caramel custard in a pretentious Badami restaurant, we returned to some much needed sleep at our hotel. Badami has its fair share of restaurants, but every one has a bar attached. These are a male preserve and day or night, it’s intimidating to have to walk through one to the ‘family room’ that most of the restaurants have.

Badami to Hampi and beyond


There are two early morning buses to Hospet from Badami leaving at 6.45 AM and 7.30 AM. The 6.45 bus finally left at 7.30, leading us to believe both buses were one and the same. The bus took an interminable four hours and a half to cover the 160 kms to Hospet. At the end of it, nothing was going to push us into another 30 minute bus ride to Hampi, so we haggled a little and some more for 100 rupees to cover the 12 odd kms to Hampi.


Ah, Hampi. This place holds some once-pleasant associations and now, I secretly dreaded taking that downward curve around the Hemakuta hill. I took a deep breath, and sat back to watch what feelings would grip me as we inched closer and closer. I mentioned Mango Tree, that oft-quoted restaurant made popular by Lonely Planet to L and her enthusiasm at the thought of good food spiraled up and caught on to me as well. As we went down around the bend, it was a pleasant feeling that filled me up, not unlike that when you meet an old friend. Not a bad start. We tumbled tummy-first into Mango Tree and loaded up on some well-deserved mango lassi and good food.


Now Mango Tree is not a gourmet’s delight, neither is it abnormally clean for an eatery – spiders web down to rest on your appalam as you gobble down your thali, you can smell the sewer from some corner seats. It’s just a decent eatery under a mango tree like millions of others across the country or the scores in Hampi. But it’s that kind of place that’s (maybe unintentionally) gained fame by making discomfort seem a tad stylish.


My determination to find Gopi Guest house (where I had stayed on my earlier trip) led us down a few wrong lanes. But Hampi’s guest house area is so small and I knew even I would not miss anything easily. Nevertheless, I silently exulted at the sight of ‘Prince Hotel’ where we’d enjoyed some wonderful pancakes and parathas. A right turn, and there was Gopi! Unfortunately, there were no rooms left, so we milled about a little and let the guest house owners court us. A little haggling, and we agreed to shell out 1100 rupees for two days and a night for a little room at Archana Guest house, with cable TV, hot water (10 rupees extra) cozily perched at the edge of a banana plantation so ubiquitous around Hampi. It was still tourist season in Hampi and prices can get exorbitant at this time.


L took to calling me her ‘little guide’, I took it rather seriously as I loaded her with some heavy duty history lessons at the Virupaksha temple. John and George’s guidebook came in very handy as we stood in a huge hall trying to locate Krishna Devaraya’s coronation mandapa. It took us a while to figure out we were standing in it! I duly pointed out the erotic sculptures that are located on the mandapa to the right of the main Virupaksha shrine. The overturned lotus bud style on the pillars, yalis, the inscriptions all highlighted, we made our way to the Hemakuta shrines next. The sun was much kinder to us in Hampi than in Badami, but a third day out in the sun was taking a huge toll on us, well, on me at least.


“You need auto, madam?”

“Not today”, I reply.

“Maybe tomorrow then madam?” I turn to see a smiling young man. Now I do not claim to be a great judge of people – I usually trust everyone I meet and hope for the best. But what I noticed about this guy was that he did not have that look which I had seen in all guest house owners and auto/taxi guys I’d met across Hampi or Goa. That smug all-knowing ‘commercial’ look that makes you sure these guys are out to rip you! We bargained with Shekhar for an all-day trip around the ruins the next day – 700 rupees. That settled we walked up to pay our respects to Kadalekalu Ganesha. KK Ganesha is big, black and big. We theorize on how they would have had to sit on his trunk to carve out his eyes. The mukha mantapam is very pretty too – slender pillars supporting an impressively high roof.


I do not know what it is with us Indians, but we have a terribly self-deprecatory attitude when it comes to people with white skin. An old-ish uncle, part of a group of 4 men, asked L to click their picture in front of Ganesh-ji. She duly passed the camera to me professing ignorance on how to take photos. Uncle invited a foreigner who was waiting for them to get done with the picture, and then invited his friend as well and I clicked a picture of 6 old men who promised to look like the Ganesha behind them in a few years. Now why did he want to click pictures along side people with white skin? We wouldn’t find many Indians dying to click pictures with black people. These white guys could have been trash-pickers back in Arizona (I have nothing against trash pickers in Arizona) but they are heroes worth including in our pictures just because their skin is white. Uggh. And then we have all this talk about how dumb Americans cannot write code without us and how America would grind to a standstill if the Indians there decided to stop work for a day! These things get to me in a way very few things do. Let’s not diverge anyway. I just remembered this clicking incident happened on Day 4 in front of Sasivekalu Ganesha whose temple has crashed and has just a ramshackle stone shed to protect him.


Hemakuta hill. The setting is impressive – a wide granite slope with about 30 shrines dedicated to a wide variety of Gods in the Hindu pantheon. We come upon a European in tattered clothes and dreadlocks talking to a boy – most probably trading weed we theorize. More familiar faces – you run into the same tourists again and again in Hampi. Hemakuta is super-cool, and L is already amazed. But there are a zillion more delightful things in Hampi, I know. I play guide again and we discover that these shrines were erected across many years by various rich traders, merchants and nobles all of them, I presume, trying to book a berth on the train to heaven.


A short walk across the main Hampi Bazaar takes us to the big monolithic Nandi. I love its Tanjore counterpart better – it has its tongue playfully stuck out! We puff up the hill and descend into the Atchutaraya temple complex. I point out some more interesting carvings to a very piqued L who excitedly took a number of pictures. There’s a huge bazaar in front of it and the next day Shekhar embarrassedly told us that it was the ‘Colgar’ bazaar. We didn’t get it – he blushed a gentle red as he murmured ‘veshi bazaar’. Oh, ‘call girl’ or the courtesans’ bazaar! Hampi had 4, or was it 5 bazaars? The vegetable market in front of the Krishna temple, the gold, silk and pearls bazaar in front of the Virupaksha temple, the courtesans’ bazaar in front of the Atchutaraya complex, the gold bazaar in front of the Vitthala complex and the pan-supaari bazaar outside the main royal enclosure. Oh that makes it five I suppose.


I am tiring of this travelogue now. What? You are too? Ok, that’s peace. Let me pack present day Hampi in a paragraph for you.

Now this Vijayanagara kingdom, it was big, alright? Consider present day Hampi as the very centre of a thriving city which extended over a radius of 60 miles according to some travel texts of yore. The wealth of this kingdom is truly legendary. Every traveler who passed through the city has attested to this. So does the fact that the Deccan Sultans put aside their differences to build one huge army with the sole aim of razing Vijayanagara to the ground. It was simply too awesome to be true, so they destroyed it. (Once done, they picked up on all their older feuds.) Now depending on what part of the world you are from, you’ve seen your share of temples, forts, castles, harems, mosques, palaces, stadiums, man-made islands, big walls, coliseums etc. right? So multiply that grandeur a few tens to a few hundred times and you’d get a picture of what Hampi must have been like. The king was called Deva Raya – connected to God on a 24-hour hotline. So he spared no expense/effort in building luxurious palaces, bathing tanks, harems, bathing tanks for the queen(s), noble men’s quarters, elephant stables and of course temples to prove his point to anyone who cared to notice. Of course, these kings also ensured their subjects were happy – canals, irrigation ditches, public baths, huge halls where they could offer their respects to the Devarayan, aqueducts, temples, bazaars, fort walls were all built. The King placed himself in the middle of all this, inside 7 layers of walls. Feel free to imagine the luxuries that must have been the order of the day within the 7th wall. Now send in an army of deranged, blood-thirsty Homo sapiens and watch death and destruction rain upon this land – what withstood this and the ravages of 400 years is what stands now.


As you zoom across the tarred roads through the ruins, it hits home that this was all just about 500 years ago. It’s at touching distance, yet most of what created a city like Hampi is lost, left behind as our generation of tech coolies takes India into an interesting future. The Vijayanagara kings were secular – they had Muslim soldiers in their armies. The Lotus Mahal is a beautiful blend of Hindu and Muslim architecture. The symmetry and perfection of its arches is stunning. The stepped tank – Pushkarani, the imposing Mahanavami Dibba, the Hazara Rama temple with its neat depiction of the Ramayana are all worth braving the sun for. Above all, current day Hampi has an indescribable attractive quality to it. Maybe it’s the boulders stacked around in impossible ways, maybe it’s the remnants of the weed joints that drifts from across the river, maybe it’s the allure of all the wealth that it held – I do not know. Hampi is a place you would want to return to.


What I am saying is, go to Hampi. It’s tourist friendly. Have the Nutela Banana Coconut pancake. Engage a 15-year old coracle guy called Siva (“I’ve been doing this since I was 12”) to take you down the river. Watch him sing and spin you around at awesome speeds on the Tungabadhra. Let him take you to where a thousand lingams stand – imagine some bored sculptor carving this on an idle afternoon. Is this what people did on their days off then? Marvel at the Nandi placed on the opposite bank of the river. Make friends with trustworthy auto drivers called Shekhar. Have pranks played on you by his bosom buddy and fellow auto driver Siva. :-) Watch a glorious Hampi sunset from Malayavantha or Matanga hill – satisfaction guaranteed. Listen and wonder at its associations with the Ramayana. Did Hanuman, Sugriva and Vaali play and fight amongst these boulders and banana trees? Did Rama really meet Hanuman and Sugriva there? Was it in this cave that he waited after dispatching Hanuman to find Sita in far off Lanka?


Tired, but feeling absolutely glorious, we landed in Bangalore the next morning. The End.


PS: You know, we should just take off on more random trips like this, I tell L. She nods her agreement. How about crossing India, west to east by train? From Mumbai to Kohima? Wanna join in?