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.
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.
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