Badami
Date arrived: 12th February 2024
Date Departed: 14th February 2024
Favourite sight: Panoramic vista from the fort
Average Cost: £32.94 PPPD
Badami is a small and relatively unexciting town in Karnataka - but is has a selection of fabulous rock cut temples dating back to the 3rd Century. It's probably not worth staying here (we discovered) but is well worth visiting on a day trip if you can.
12th February 2024
The train in to Badami was a bit late, and consequently darkness was falling when we arrived at the small train station some 6KM north of the town. We managed to arrange a tuk-tuk into town and to our accommodation, and got a bit of a feel for what looked like a fairly primitive, but busy, small town.
Having checked in and paid for our two nights here, we headed up the main road in search of somewhere to eat. This was quite challenging, as it was clearly a very busy road with lots of trucks and other traffic, making progress difficult as there was (of course) no pavement - or where there was it was covered in motorbikes, signs, or whatever elsee might stop it being useful.
Our first choice for dinner was closed, but we managed to find a small local restaurant that served us some simple fare, and even got us a beer (cash on order - presumably for the waiter to nip round the corner to the liquor store and buy it!)
We were relieved to make it back to the hotel (itself a bit of a strange arrangement) and know that at least breakfast would be served there in the morning.
13th February
So let's be honest - Badami is a small town which doesn't really have much of a tourist infrastructure, and the main road through town is busy, smelly and noisy. There isn't a great deal of choice on the catering front either - but once you get out into the rock cut caves and start exploring the ruins of the 6th century fortress, it all makes sense! Let me try to show you what I mean.
Looking out from the back of a 3rd Century rock temple
Look at the intricacy of the carvings in this cave
These temples are carved from the solid rock of a 100 foot cliff face - no room for error
This picture gives some context to the previous three
Looking down over the ancient reservoir that was built to hold water for the fortress and growing city
We spent several hours this morning exploring the caves, built between the third and sixth centuries. The view fom here to the reservoir was spectacular and we descended to explore that a bit. Afterwards we made our way across to the relatively new archeology museum which contained some great insight into some of the history of these relics.
From the museum we followed the steep and winding path to the ruins of the sixth century fortress, one of two which guarded the cave temples and the city that sprung up around them. There isn't much of the fort left, but a couple of its temples are still there, and the paths up through the cliffs are just spectacular, as are the views from the top.
Looking back at the rock cut temples (you can just see them in the right of the middle third of the image) from site of the fort.
Clambering up the ancient paths to the fortress - preserved and improved by the Archeological Survey of India
The view from the first temple (you can see it in the foreground above)
Having spent most of the day exploring Badami's sites, we managed to get some food, and then spent a little bit of time slightly changing our plans to leave earlier the next day, instead of catching the 8PM train that we were scheduled on. Badami's caves and fort are impressive, but there isn't anything much to do for another day here, and for the sake of about £12 of extra cost, we thought it might be good to spend an afternoon having a look round Hubballi, rather than arriving into the train station at 11:30PM!
14th February
With our day in Badami suitably truncated, we ate breakfast, packed, and then met our taxi driver at 10AM for the 3 hour drive to Hubbali!
