#hospete

[shivdattbharat]

#तुंगभद्रा #hospete #IndianDam #PowerGeneration (at Tungabhadra Dam, India)

[mckgiri-blog]

kaDalu ninnade, haDagu ninnade.. muLugadirali baduku.. The Ocean is Yours, so is the Boat.. request not to let the Life drown.. #TungabadraReservoir #Munirabad #Hospete #KSNarasimhaswamy #S7Edge #Perpetua #MobilePhotography (at Tungabhadra Dam Reservoir)

[indiawithal]

Day 25 - 26: Hospete - Hampi - Mysuru

We arrived in Hampi on the morning of the 5th after a one night stopover in the neighbouring service town of Hospete. Our accommodation for the night - Padma Guesthouse - pretended they had not recieved our booking (apparently a common scam to try to get us to pay more). Not buying this we walked next door to the nicer Rajesh Guesthouse and got a better rate.

The guesthouse had views of the Virupaksha Temple - Hampi’s only remaining working temple and our first stop. The temple also helpfully housed the tourist office so we were harassed by tour guides and rickshaw drivers telling us we were wasting our time if we didn’t take advantage of thier services.

The temple built in 1442 - was an impressive sight with its 50m high gateway and a maze of temples and stone chambers. The temple was busy with people worshiping, ringing bells and feeding monkeys. A small child was accosted by a monkey who wanted her chips - I felt her pain.

The temple also had an elephant Lakshmi, who if you put some rupees in her trunk would bless you by bopping you on the head with her trunk.

Hampi was the site of Vijayanagar - the capital city of one of the largest Hindu empires in history. From 1336 to 1565, the city had about 500,000 people and was home to a large bazaar which attracted merchants from all over the world. This ended when the city was sacked by Deccan Sultans after which the city fell into ruin. The effect of this is that Hampi is home to large amount of ruins spread across a huge area. The other attraction in Hampi is the geography which is made up of large mounds of boulders across miles of undulating landscape. It is quite a sight to behold.

There are two main clusters of ruins - the sacred and the royal centres. We start off looking at the ruined temples of the sacred centre. We walk past a monolithic carving of a bull and find the beautiful Achyutaraya Temple.

From there we walk with no particular direction until we come across a river crossing where you can pay to be rowed upstream in a coracle (essentially a bamboo raft). The ride was expensive (300 rupees pp) but for some reason none of us bothered to bargain.

The trip was a great time - floating past abandoned temples. The guide waited until the halfway point to tell us the river was crocodile infested. I stopped dangling my hand in the water after that. The trip took about 30 mins and was capped off with the guide turning the raft into a centrifuge and “giving us a spin”.

Off the boat at yet another ruined temple. Feeling pretty ruined myself, I sit under a tree and eat a packet of Balaji sour cream and onion chips (my second favourite chip flavour of the trip so far).

We crossed the river to try and locate Anjandari Hill - the birthplace of the monkey god Hanuman. But - we were lost. Instead we saw a goat give birth and almost instincutually we followed the trail of placenta and after birth to a bare bones eco retreat where we could grab some lunch - coconut curry. They helpfully directions and we reached the foot of the hill an hour before sunset. The 850-step climb was easy enough and when we reached the top we were rewarded by 360-degree views of the landscape. The walk down the hill was followed by a incredibly bumpy rickshaw ride and an after dark coracle ride back across the river.

Our second day was a cycle tour around the royal complex with our euthusiastic but less than knowledgeable tour guide - Huliya. My bike had no gears and was too small for me which made it very difficult to travel up Hampi’s hills.

The tour visited a Ganesh statue, Krishna and Rama temples, and the remains of the royal palaces and baths (i.e. ruins, ruins and more ruins). Throughout our stops, we were fortunate enough to hear Huliya’s unique take on Hampi’s history which made the place seem like an utopian-communist paradise where the king ensured that noone went hungry - “Hampi is for everyone”. Although this I have a rudimentary understanding of the operation of the caste system in the 14th century - I thought this was highly unlikely. He also informed us in great detail about how the “musliman” came and destroyed the great socialist empire of Hampi - including sacking all the royal palaces which the monarchy earned by “giving so much the people” by building a lot of temples. Such selflessness.

Huliya took us for a nice lunch on the grass off banana leaves. And after about 6 hours the tour finished. At last.

Tim and I cycled to visit the Lotus Mahal and the elephant stables. Which were so much more impressive than anything we saw on the cycle tour. As a final act for the day, Tim and I visited Vithala Temple which housed a Vishnu’s chariot carved out of stone. As we began our walk back to Hampi Bazaar, the setting sun turned the boulders a firey orange.

Tonight we are catching an 12 hour train to Mysuru. Great fun.