Hampi

Date arrived: 8th February 2024

Date Departed: 12th February 2024

Favourite sight: Krishna Bazaar

Average Cost: £27.61 PPPD

Hampi is the ruins of Vijayanagar, one of the largest Hindu empires ever seen, which was razed to the ground in 1565 by a confederation of Deccan sultanates. It's now a surreal mix of boulder strewn landscapes littered with ruined and partly-ruined temples, all set against a vibrant backdrop of palm trees and banana plantations. In short, it's incredible.

8th February 2024

The first train today was a 5 hour journey in 3AC (third class), which is slightly more crowded and generally noisy than the 2AC we've booked for most of our longer train journeys. It passed fairly uneventfully though, and the train was only half an hour late, still leaving us with time to make our connection for the second, shorter train, that took us to Hosapete station. From here we were met by a Tuk-tuk driver organised by our accommodation, complete with name sign :-)

A half hour of gentle unhurried rickshaw travel later brought us in sight of some of the incredible monuments of Hampi, and into the small backpacker community of Hampi Bazaar. It's truly an odd little place, comprising about four parallel streets and a selection of simple dwellings which are almost completely given over to homestays, shops and restaurants. The street traders and tuk-tuk drivers gather by the entrance, and it's definitely one of the places I've seen most western tourists - with the possible exception of Palolem in Christmas week.

We checked into our small room in the Thilak homestay, where our host offered us a wealth of useful advice on the area, and recommended a couple of places to eat. It didn't take long for us to take him up on one of his suggestions, and we visited the Old Chill Out Ganesh restaurant, all of 30 feet away. This was quite a cool establishment, with a mix of floor cushions and tables, and a reasonably eclectic, largely-veg-but-not-entirely, menu to choose from. Perched on a floor cushion, the bass heavy indian soundtrack, low light, and smokey atmosphere made it feel a bit like a shady meeting place from a dystopian future-set novel. It was quite cool, and the food was good!

9th February

After a nice breakfast at the Old Chill Out resstaurant (for breakfast, proximity is everything) we set out to explore the very impressive Virupaksha temple which overlooks the hamlet of Hampi Bazaar. Virupakhsa is part of the sacred centre of Hampi, which is the part of the old city of Vijayanagar where all of the temples were. The sacred centre includes Hampi Bazaar, and extends for about 2KM East and 1KM south of the hamlet, so we decided to explore the western part of this today.

The Virupaksha temple has a main gate that is some 55M tall, behind which are various other buidings, a slightly smaler secondary gate, and then a large tank outside the temple walls. The  temple itself is a working temple, with about six shrines to various Hindu deities inside. Whilst the temple dates to the 6th century, the main gate was built in the 14th, and the rest of the currrent buildings over the next 200 years or so. It was pretty cool to visit and explore.

Some views of the Virupaksha Temple

From the Virupaksha temple we had some lunch in Hampi Bazaar, and then stayed out of the sun for a couple of hours before heading a bit further south to look at some of the older temple ruins on the hillside, and also the large Krishna temple, slightly further to the South. The hillside ruins included a couple of fascinating monolithic carvings of Ganesha (the elephant god) which had been carved from individual massive bouders. These were very cool. 

Whilst the Krishna temple was interesting, we crossed the main road from there and found ourselves in the almost deserted Krishna Bazaar, nearby.  As a relatively recent excavation, there was still quite a lot of work to be done here, but it was very peaceful and calming, set as it was against he backdrop of Hampi's crazy, boulder strewn scenery. I think we just managed to catch the early evening light here perfectly, but the end result was a beautiful, peaceful hour wandering amidst the ruins of an ancient civilisation, which we found just incredible.

(Above) A selection of pictures from the recently excavated Krishna Bazaar, just south of Hampi

(Below) Looking to the Northwest from Krishna Bazaar as the early evening sun starts to set

From the Krishna Bazaar we headed back towards Hampi village, detouring over some of the hills to take in the sunset view over the ancient landscape. Whilst we didn't spend much time taking pictures, we really enjoyed the incedible light and fabulous scenery on the hillside.

Sunset from Hampi's Sacred Centre

10th February

Hampi has a couple of sights that charge an entrance fee, and a ticket for one is valid for the others on the same day. On this basis we decided to visit two of these today, using a tuk-tuk where necessary to get between them.

After breakfast, we started by exploring the rest of Hampi's Sacred Centre, taking a walk up the main street of Hampi Bazaar to the Monolithic Bull statue, then crossing a hill to come down on the ruins of the surprisingly impressive Achyutaraaya Swami temple.

From here we headed North once more, aiming for the river, and traversing the third of the seven bazaars whose remains have been discovered in Hampi. Each of these Bazaars has been massive - at least 1KM long and with multiple rows of portos, which would have translated to permanent shops, doubtless bolstered by myriad tents and stalls running the lengh of these wide streets. It gives an impressive insight into the scale of ancient Vijayanagar, and how much trade must have taken place here.

As we traversed the pathways near the river, we saw the remains of an ancient bridge, and also saw simple coracle boats sailing on the river. From these boats, to ladies doing their washing, and a selection of fishermen, both in boats and on the shore, this was a fascinating snapshot of life in this part of India.

We made it to the moderately busy Vitthala temple, where we paid the 600 Rupees each entrance fee that would get us in both here, and to the other exhibits around Hampi. Whilst this temple was moderately impressive, in particular for the stone statue of a temple kart that graces it's courtyard ,it was certainly no more impressive than the other two we had seen in the past 24 hours. That said, part of the underground inner sanctum was very atmospheric!

We walked back from the temple to Hampi Bazaar, taking a slightly different rout here to pass along the 14th century river walkway, which was a main trade route between the various Bazaars in the city. After a brief lunch in the village, we took a Tuk-tuk for our first visit to Hampi's royal centre. About 2KM south of Hampi Bazaar, this is the area where many of the noble and royal buildings of ancient Vijayanagar are situated. Specifically, it was also the home of the Zanana, which is the other key monument that we wanted to visit today whilst our (expensive) ticket was valid for it.

As we headed to the Zanana we spotted a couple of other sites in the royal centre that we earmarked to come back to tomorrow. We headed through the gate into the walled compound, and explored the handful of buildings here. Whilst called the Zanana, there's no evidence to suggest that this area was actually a women's compound, and the fact that it contains the old royal mint and two guard towers would strongly suggest otherwise. 

There were some impressive buildings however, and we enjoyed a good look around. In particular, the building called the Elephant Stables was very cool - and inspired me to think about how one might convert that to a modern luxury dwelling!

We walked back to Hampi Bazaar from the royal centre, leaving any further exploration along that route for tomorrow, when we planned to come and check out the area more fully.

11th February

Today we set out once more to the royal centre of Hampi,  heading out straight after breakfast, and walking the 2 1/2KM-or-so to get there. Our first step was the Bhima Gateway, a very impressively restored Gateway that sits just off the main rroad, before you reach the royal centre proper. It was very cool to scramble on, and mae for a few good piccies!

From here we moved on to the main complex starting with a very cool underground Shiva temple. The temple isn't active so we were able to go inside, and followed a couple of Indians right into the depths. There was quite  lot of manky water down there, which the Indians just waded through, however we explored a bit further and found a better way to get past it, but going up on top, andthen back down a bit further along!

The underground chambers were quite atmospheric, but when Julie made the mistake of turning on her torch, she revealed quite how many bats were living down here - and fleeing the bright light.

From the Shiva temple we wandered round several other sets of largely ruined buildings. Whilst for the most part only foundations remained, you could very clearly see how substantial some of these palace complexes must have beeen before the whole thing was razed!

We also visited the impressive Hazara Raama temple, and then spent a bit of time exploring the remains of the Royal Palace, and in particular the baths and the beautifully restored stepwell there.

After another brief visit to the Elephant Stables, which raised the ire of the security guard as we didn't have a ticke for today, we caught ourselves a tuk-tuk back to Hampi Bazaar

I've not mentioned much about meals in this section of Hampi as there is so much more to talk about and share, but it's safe to say that, like every other evening in Hampi, we had a nice dinner at one of the several restaurants in the tiny village.

12th February

We were a little lazy today, arranging a Tuk-tuk to Hosapete Station through the accommodation, and basically spending the morning relaxing with a nice breakfast! We reached the railway station after an uneventfu journey, and managed (after some searching) to find a left luggage office, with a view to spending a couple of hours exploring Hosapete.

Yeah, that was less successful than we hoped! We struggled to find somewhere to grab a coffee - although did eventually end up wth some Jaggery Tea. We manageed to find an ATM as well, and then with time ti kill, I popped in to a barbers where I managed to get a pretty good haircut for £3.

We found ourselves back at the station earlier than we'd hoped, with about an hour to wait for our train. There was an air-conditioned waiting room however, and in good time we managed to collect our luggage without issue, and take our seats for the 2 1/2 hour ride to Badami.