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
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
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
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
PS: You know, we should just take off on more random trips like this, I tell L. She nods her agreement. How about crossing
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