It was truly a mag­i­cal expe­ri­ence. I have always won­dered why there’s so much hype about the town of Hampi, 7 hours from Ban­ga­lore. It was only when I vis­ited the place that I real­ized why. I never imag­ined there could be so much beauty amidst the ruins of an ancient king­dom. The jour­ney to Hampi from Ban­ga­lore is pleas­ant in parts and not so pleas­ant in oth­ers. We took the road and saw quite a few acci­dents on the way. One par­tic­u­larly bad one with a Honda City crushed by a truck.

The express­way from Tumkur, which lasts for about 50 kms, is the fastest phase of the jour­ney. After that there are so many diver­sions, that I nearly run the car off the road once! We stop at a sun­flower field enroute where I sight this old man and I click before he real­izes what I’m upto. Some­where, around Chi­tradurga you can see the wind­mills all around the sur­round­ing hills. Quite a pretty sight. We stop for chai (seri­ously could go down as one of the worst cups of tea I have had!) but I like the friendly boy who serves us tea, the angry cat and the peace­ful pup we encounter at the stall.

We reach Hampi (after ask­ing for direc­tions at sev­eral junc­tions as there were no signs) at about 2 pm. After fresh­en­ing up, armed with a map we set out for the Queen’s Bath — a rather elab­o­rate struc­ture for a bath­room. But I guess they weren’t roy­als for noth­ing, ay? Curved ornate bal­conies over­looked the main bath area and there were sev­eral open archways.

Now, I am not sure why the Queen would want to go about her clean­ing activ­i­ties in full pub­lic view, but I’m sure the onlook­ers weren’t com­plain­ing. Huge groups of kids had con­verted the lawns into a pic­nic spot — eat­ing, play­ing and gen­er­ally mak­ing merry.

We move on to the under­ground Shiva tem­ple. This one looks like it was dis­cov­ered later as some exca­va­tion work is still hap­pen­ing out­side. Appar­ently, they weren’t too happy con­struct­ing on the ground, so they dug up the place and man­aged to build a tem­ple below. Rather dank pas­sage­ways criss-cross the struc­ture. The after­noon sun fil­ters through the impos­ing columns and squir­rels play and hide and seek in the nooks and corners.

In Hampi, you’d be for­given for think­ing you’ve been taken back in time. The whole town has such an old world feel. Every­thing seems like it is tum­bling down (and yet every­thing is actu­ally quite well pre­served by the gov­ern­ment now). When you take a walk down the main street in Hampi (and it’s a rather short walk), you real­ize how small the place really is. All the small restau­rants and eater­ies are con­cen­trated in this area. And they all boast of being rec­om­mended by either the Rough Guide or the Lonely Planet, as each of them will scream out when you pass them! From Banana Pil­lars (go fig­ure!) to Greek Salad — you get it all!

At one end of the Hampi Bazaar is the town’s largest struc­ture — the 11 storey Viru­pak­sha Tem­ple. In the court­yard is an ele­phant chew­ing on his (or her) grass. I get quite a few kids all want­ing their pic­tures taken. And an old woman who insisted I take her pic­ture along with her grand­son. Else­where, a man blows on a conch shell and just for Rs 10!

At about 6.00 pm, we head towards Hemkuta Hill, where we’ve been told one an catch a beau­ti­ful sun­set — if you’re lucky. We’re not that lucky — it’s a rather cloud­less day and the sun sinks beyond the hori­zon with­out much drama. Still there’s quite a crowd at the top, perched on the rocks and walk­ing around. It’s so silent, some­times it’s eerie. As you look around, all you can see for miles around you are just rocks of all shapes and sizes. And the hori­zon turn­ing a shade of pur­plish pink and blue.

And then there’s the moon too mak­ing an appear­ance. At the bot­tom of the hill is a tem­ple with a large Ganesh statue inside. It looks beau­ti­ful lit up in the night. That’s the last mon­u­ment for the day. We make our way back to the hotel.

The Rough Guide says in Hampi you can catch “arguably” the best sun­rises in the world. Our plan is to trek up to sun­rise point on Matanga Hill, which is to the east of Hampi Bazaar. At 5.30 am in the morn­ing, it is totally dark. And since the guide book talks about mug­gers and thieves who take advan­tage of the dark I have a lot of sec­ond thoughts when I see the dark out­line of the hill before us.

After much debate and dis­cus­sion, we start climb­ing the hill. At least I have my rather heavy tri­pod if any­one wants to act funny! The steps are roughly cut and it takes us about ½ hour to climb to the top. We reach just as dawn is break­ing. I been a while since I’ve caught a sun­rise. It’s rare that I wake up so early and of course, you don’t get to see much of it in the city.

I can see the light break­ing from across the hori­zon as the sky turns pur­plish blue with streaks of orange. I perch myself on a rock and watch nature’s spec­ta­cle unfold. There’s another guy who has braved his way to the top. A while later, 3 for­eign­ers give us company.

The sun finally peeks out of the hori­zon. As it comes out it casts a beau­ti­ful orange halo all around the rocky hills. It is mes­mer­iz­ing, to say the very least. Finally, the orange ball emerg­ing out of the dis­tance turn­ing big­ger and big­ger. Against an old tem­ple struc­ture at the top, it makes a par­tic­u­larly beau­ti­ful sight.

We are joined by three vis­i­tors who perch them­selves on the edge to catch a bet­ter view. It’s beau­ti­ful and not to be missed if you ever visit Hampi. Prob­a­bly one of the best moments of the whole trip as the sun gives a daz­zling dis­play of its imagery and magic. I was glad I climbed the hill after all.

An enter­pris­ing chai­wal­lah is at the top, and I have, what I can describe best as prob­a­bly one of the most tepid cups of tea (stiff com­pe­ti­tion to the one I had ear­lier on the road!) I have ever tasted! And of course, he didn’t have change, so after hav­ing paid for every­one on top of the hill, we made our way back to the town, stop­ping once in a while to click a pic­ture or two as the morn­ing mist has cleared and we caught a glimpse of the view for miles around.

Hampi, is also a birder’s delight. As we descend the hill, we caught sight of pretty spot­ted doves, a cou­cal, para­keets, hoopoes and even an enthu­si­as­tic and curi­ous peacock!

To the oppo­site end of Hampi Bazaar is an inter­est­ing struc­ture, which now houses the Crafts Empo­rium. I roam around the long never-ending cor­ri­dors. I spot a sadhu sit­ting in a cor­ri­dor and get rep­ri­manded when I point my cam­era at him! So I set­tle for a friendly pea­cock who has no prob­lems with posing!

We head back to Hampi Bazaar for a hearty break­fast at a place called Venkateswara (also men­tioned in Lonely Planet!). From there we move on to a tem­ple on Hemkuta Hill. The morn­ing is turn­ing out to be quite pleas­ant. Unlike the day before, there are even some clouds in the sky.

My car had got­ten mobbed in the mean­while with curi­ous kids, who are all pos­ing in front of it. Ma Cherie, I must say, has got­ten more than her share of atten­tion dur­ing this trip, and I think it had some­thing to do with her colour.

From there we made our way to the Vithala Tem­ple, another very famous mon­u­ment in Hampi. It’s a huge com­plex so try and make sure you have a look at the map first! Oth­er­wise, you could walk and walk and reach the Hampi Bazaar again. A huge group of for­eign tourists had just unloaded from a very flashy look­ing bus (which had to be parked quite far away, since it could not get through one of those low arched rocks at the entrance).

There is an army of school kids again. Besides the main tem­ple com­plex, this area houses the King’s Bal­ance and sev­eral other struc­tures (can’t remem­ber the names though — after a while it’s tough, believe me!). Some impos­ing struc­tures and a lit­tle walk later and we come to a tem­ple over­look­ing the Tungab­hadra river.

Lots of reli­gious (and bathing, which could be related) activ­ity is going on in this area. There’s also cor­a­cle rides one can take here for 50 bucks per per­son (both ways). We take the cor­a­cle back to where we started. It’s a pleas­ant ride along the river (espe­cially so since some­one else is row­ing). And a cor­a­cle is surely a fun way to travel. It feels like you’re in a huge salad bowl. Thank­fully, you’re not the salad.

From there we enter the main Vithala tem­ple com­plex and I come across artists sketch­ing inside. I am tempted to just sit there and watch. Or bet­ter still, join them! But I take a few pic­tures of the artists at work instead. Some of them are really good.

The tem­ple also houses a Stone Char­iot in its front court­yard. The rest of the struc­ture is very sim­i­lar to the oth­ers. A main struc­ture in the cen­tre. And longish struc­tures with lots of pil­lars on the side. These guys sure loved their pil­lars. After roam­ing around for a bit, I sight a very inter­est­ing tree. And take a few pho­tographs from inside and out­side. It looks as old as the buildings.

Rather tired by now (it’s about 12 noon) and we’ve packed in quite a few tem­ples! We go back for lunch, freshen up and then set out again at about 4pm. Today we are deter­mined to catch the sun­set. We head for the Queen’s Bath area where there are some more inter­est­ing struc­tures we hadn’t had time for yesterday.

After a brief stop at the Mahava­hana Dibba and another tem­ple, we head to the Lotus Mahal. Pink coloured walls and a lot of arches. From the dis­tance, this one looks truly beau­ti­ful. Squir­rels dart in and out of the cor­ri­dor. From here we head to the impos­ing Ele­phant Sta­bles. Of course, they look noth­ing like the sta­bles that you and I might keep our horses, if we could afford them. One can almost imag­ine a pro­ces­sion of grandly dressed ele­phants being paraded around the lawns and housed in this rather grand structure.

The sun in the mean­while has begun to set. So we head out again towards Hemkuta Hill. Along the way, we catch sight of the sun turn­ing into a huge golden ball between the banana plan­ta­tions (did I men­tion that they are the 2nd most abun­dant sight in Hampi after rocks?). Unfor­tu­nately, our race with the sun didn’t have a fruit­ful end­ing. I just about man­aged to catch the last of the sun going down, and I was still on a black and white roll!

We trek up to the hill again. The sky turn­ing that beau­ti­ful shade of pur­ple again, but like last evening, it wasn’t too bright. I tried a few shots any­way. The moon was out nice and bright again (I think it was the day after full moon).

Once the evening set in, we walked across to the Hanu­man Tem­ple, which was look­ing really pretty in the evening light. A gag­gle of school boys wanted to touch my cam­era and know my name etc. The kids, by the way, are really friendly around here. At about 7.30 or so we decided to call it a day. Refer­ring to the Rough Guide, we tried to find a place called Mango Tree for din­ner. But after tak­ing a wrong road, all we could see were banana trees all around. The Mango Tree eluded us so we went back to the really slow ser­vice of Mayura Bhu­vanesh­wari.

In the morn­ing, behind Mayura, we can see a tem­ple and we decide to try our luck there before leav­ing Hampi. It’s about 2 kms from the hotel and there’s a lock on the gate. For­tu­nately, the gate­keeper seems to live across the tem­ple, so he opens it for his early vis­i­tors. There are actu­ally peo­ple inside and I dis­cover this gen­tle­man study­ing (the scrip­tures?) in the early morn­ing light.

This is the Patab­hi­rama Tem­ple. And the final one for us as we bid good­bye to Hampi.

We take a quick detour via the Tungab­hadra Dam. The water sluice gates are not open. But there are heaps of birds chirp­ing around the place. It’s about a one-km walk from the entrance. When we get back, Ma Cherie has been mobbed again. This time by googles wear­ing gig­gly teenagers who are pos­ing and tak­ing pic­tures with my car.

The more inter­est­ing sight of the dam, how­ever is out­side from the road­side. I catch sight of these trucks get­ting an early morn­ing bath by the side of the dam! What a novel way to clean a truck. I think I should try this with my car some­time. At the lake beside my house. On the way, just after we reach Tumkur, we make our last pit stop to catch the sun­set by the high­way. It’s hard to resist watch­ing the sun going down on yet another day!

ONLINE ALBUM: HAMPI, DECEMBER 2004.