Friday 31 January

Hampi

It’s curious looking back on today – our visit to Hampi almost didn’t happen. We weren’t initially planning to go to Hampi, but when I realised that our route from Bengaluru to Mumbai would take us fairly close, I pushed for Hampi’s inclusion. It required quite a bit of rejigging of Matthew’s planned schedule, but I’m very glad that we went – it’s an extraordinary, enormous set of ruins from a great  Hindu civilisation. 

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Extensive remains of a fortified city that was the grand capital of the Vijayanagara empire from 1336. The city was the world’s second largest after Beijing at the time and it had religious, royal and commercial areas. The Vijayanagara empire was defeated by a coalition of Muslim armies in 1565 after which Hampi was ruined and abandoned. 

Hampi is about 13 kilometres (8.1 miles) from Hosapete. The train arrived at 07:00 and our onward train to Mumbai was scheduled to leave Hosapete at 13:40 taking us overnight to arrive in Mumbai at 6am. I knew that just a morning in Hampi wouldn’t do it justice and I knew that we’d only get to see a fraction of the place, but that would be better than nothing.

Our overnight journey to Hosapete was tiring – it was our first sleeper train in India and we had a shared cabin with two others. Our travel companions were getting off in the middle of the night. Neither of us slept well, and we arrived in Hosapete feeling very tired. 

We didn’t want to be burdened with our bags on our visit to Hampi, so we had to search (quite hard) for the left luggage room that we knew from guidebook was at the station in Hosapete. Once found, inevitable forms and passports and payments needed to be made.

Outside Hosapete a tuktuk driver was keen to take us to Hampi and he also wanted to drive us around some of the major sites (which are spread over 16 square miles), but neither of us were really in the mood for tearing about in a tuktuk and trying to take too much in, so I asked him to just take us to the site and we’d make our own decisions about what to see.

We were dropped off by the Virupaksha Hindu temple, which predates the rest of the city includes a monastery and remained an active Hindu pilgrimage site after the city was destroyed and abandoned. It was beautiful and we could hear constant singing from the temple complex as we walked up an adjacent granite hill and explored the ruins.

It was still early and there was hardly anyone else around – just some young pilgrims, all dressed in deep red and a small group of French tourists. 

We found some benches at Sunset Pont at the top of hill and ate some breakfast – that was magical – we had wonderful views of surrounding mountains, the soft singing from the temple, the exciting chatter of the young pilgrims … and a troop of monkeys realised that we were eating and came to see what they could scavenge!

We made a plan to walk along the river Tungabhadra to the royal quarter  – I really wanted to see the unique chariot temple – carved in stone and made even more famous because it appears on the 50 rupees banknote.

On our way we say an interesting photographic exhibition – some prints from the mid 1850s when much of the site was overgrown compared with now.

We went to the Nandi – an enormous stone statue of the god in the form of a bull. We rested in the shade there and tried to take everything in. I feel some affection towards Nandi – ever since Vaishakh took us to the Bull temple in Bangaluru – Nandi always seems to me to be rather stately, patient and peaceful.

The walk along the river was lovely- with more and more extensive ruins and the Sri Yantrodharaka Hanuman temple – with beautiful carved elephants guarding the entrance. 

The Shri Achyutaraaya Swami temple with an enormous, but empty, theertham (tank near temple that is filled with holy water for priest to bathe in). 

Then on to see the thing I really came to see: the Shree Vijaya Vitthala temple and the surrounding structures. On our we met a young British man from Cambridge, called Tom. He was a sweet guy – on a three month sabbatical and travelling along – heading to Vietnam after India… what a great trip!

The Shree Vijaya Vitthala was more than I could hope for – it’s extraordinary that it was abandoned since so much remains. It was strange to think of this place – now so beautiful and quiet and think of how it might have been in its heyday crowded and full of noise and the colour. 

The tranquility was shattered by a couple of very loud Australian tourists – they had a guide and were asking him some really silly questions … it was obvious that they had no idea where they were or what they were seeing. I felt a little embarrassed to also be a White westerner near them. Time for us to move on. 

We had about an hour left and I talked to Matthew about what we could do next – we agreed that the Zanana enclosure – about 6km away with the Lotus Mahal, watch towers, guardhouse and elephant stables would be possible if we walked back to main road and tried to get a tuktuk. We found a driver who agreed to take us to the enclosure – wait for us and then drive us back to Hosapete railway station.

The Zanana enclosure was more extraordinary – I feel like I run out of superlatives when trying to describe Hampi. The photos don’t do it justice – the warm air, bright sunshine, cool breeze, sounds of the birds, sweet smells, friendly people … a place to spend time, but unfortunately we had to go.

Our tuktuk driver was crazy fast, weaving around cars, bikes, cattle-drawn carts and pedestrians- and often on the wrong side of the road – on our return journey. Matthew had to close his eyes. I hung on (no seatbelts!). The train was an hour late and there was a last minute change of platform that meant hundreds of people trudging over a bridge (no walking across the tracks here!). The train was enormous. Bars on the windows are to prevent monkeys climbing in by the way , nothing to do with crime … unless we count monkey business as a crime!

Our cabin to Mumbai was a two-berth. All felt very 1950s style, but perfectly comfortable. We’d brought plenty of supplies – so picnic dinner, watching some Monty Don garden tv on the iPad and then dig in for the rest of our 16 hours journey to Mumbai