Hampi - pure "rock" music

26th, 27th April 2008

Domingo Paes beat us to it. The Portuguese horse-trader called Hampi the "the best provided for city in the world"  and found it "...as large as Rome and very beautiful to look at..." during his richly detailed visit to the city in 1520.

 

The "before" photograph. See here going clockwise:  Viayam in the red T Shirt, Kip, Ananth, Shringar, Sankara, Kunnal and Ravi	We took the Hampi Express to Hospeth to give Kip an authentic taste of India.	We picked, probably, the worst of the season to go there with the mercury perennially stuck about the 40 degree Celcius mark.
Day 1	We retained four rickshaws for the two days that we were there. For the better part, they allowed us to drive around the ruins and the town.	Queen's bath was the first stop despite telling the group that the name referred to the place not the process.
Kip proving that the moat at the Queen's bath was not broad enough to keep away the peeping toms	The handsome walls around the queen's bath were very Cuscanian	The popular victory platform in Hampi.
The stepped tank that resonated with Kip's "Abe Chup" (sic)	The team besides the super sized Kings bath	Sankar, Sunil and Shringar at Diwan-E-Aam or the hall where the king met the common man. The photograph shows the "security counter" used to frisk people as they entered.
Shringar and Vijayam near a panel depicting the Sugriva-Bali fight in the Hazararama temple	We ate some spicy food at the picturesque Mango Tree	and stole 40 winks before plunging back into the 500 year old city
Sankara and Ananth in front of a rock overhang used by Indians 8000 years ago as a canvass	The two-storied gateway on the Hemakuta hill. The three layers representing different energy levels (four is you include the photographer)	The Hampi heat had just about started to hit us before we drenched ourselves in cold water at the pre-Vijayanagar era Triple Shrined Temple on the Hemakuta hills
The metaphorical FY09 target..	.. which the girls seem to find easy	Kip's  "cow on the road" India photograph. This one near the Virupaksha temple.
Ananth inside the Virupaksha temple	Kip comes across a slightly bigger animal in the Virupaksha temple and gets his blessings	The ancient steps to the top of the Matanga hill
And the wait for the ..	.. sunset	The proud Vijayam
Day 2	The open air Bhojan-alaya with plates carved in Schist and a very, very hungry Vijayam and Shringar	The 500 year old terrakota pipeline at the Octagonal Fountain
The grand entrance to the flooded Underground Siva Temple which lay buried underground for over 500 years	The marriage mathapa in the Prasanna Virupaksha	The team atop the Octagonal Pavillion with Ravi in the gargoyle pose
Sunil in front of the beautiful Lotus Mahal in the Zenana enclosure. Was it really the harem or the HQ of the commander-in-chief?	Kip seated in the elephant drivers pavilion with the 11 pens of the elephant stable visible in the background.	The Krishnadevaraya funded Krishna temple clicked from the exact same spot that Colonel Alexander Greenlaw clicked in 1856
And once again, Kip and Ravi, unable to resist the temptation to scale the boulder of Hampi	\While the ongoing repair works prevented entry into the main shrine of the Vitthala temple (and access to the musical pillars), the 16th century courtyard kept the jaws open.	Sankara and Ravi  with KIp at the Hanuman stone in the Vitthala temple courtyard, before they took off for a dip in the Tungabhadra
The dragons in the Vitthala temple  proving that the "Chinese have been here"	Finally, the after photograph. A little sleep deprived, a bit hung-over, a tad sun-burnt and thoroughly impressed

 

 

 

 

 

Hampi resources

 

The new Cambridge history of India: Vijayanagar Author: Burton Stein ISBN:978-81-85618-46-3 Price: Rs. 195/-	Hampi Authors: John M Fritz & George Michell ISBN: 81-7508-336-0 Price: Rs. 396/-
Vijayanagara: Origin of the city and the empire Author: N. Venkata Ramanayya ISBN: 8120605454 Price: Rs. 265/-	New Light on Hampi JOhn m Fritz and George Michell ISBN:978-8185026534 Price: Rs. 2250