The Stone Surprise: Hampi & Kishkinda

The other day Sumit, Nirmalya and me decided to make a trip to some place over a pitcher of beer in a Bangalore pub. The prime motive was not to let the extended weekend off get wasted over more beer. The place was never decided that night as we returned in quite an inebriated condition paying the proverbial one and half times auto fare though the auto wallah had all the mood to shell out a few extra moolah out of us IT people. After all its perfectly legal for Bangalore auto wallas to be a bit corrupt and charge exhorbitantly.

So next day morning the venue was decided upon. It wasnt that easy as Sumit surfed the net and found out places that we could visit which I was sure didnt have human population 100 sq kms in its vicinity. Thus we dropped our options one after the other and finally zeroed in on Hampi and Kishkinda. Without any of the planning that is entailed in any of my travels I decided to let fate take its own course and got ready, packed and called the cab all in a matter of 2 hours for a 2 day getaway from the IT city to a ruined city.

The ride was awesome with the Tata Indica cab zooming at speeds close to 100-110 kmph on the Tumkur road and the NH-4 that connects Bangalore to Pune. The 6 lane national highway was quite a delight for any driver to go full blast on the accelrator. We stopped over for a late lunch at a dhaba and enjoyed every bit of the Punjabi food served there. It was quite a treat to finally get an egg bhurji without the helpful serving of curry leaves that was so common to South Indian food.

The 6 lane higway abruptly ended some 200 kms from Bangalore leaving us with a two lane highway for the rest of the 150kms. Apparently it had been left incomplete as the Golden Quadrilateral project ran into trouble when India embraced one coalition government for the other. We reached Hospet (a major town some 30 kms from Hampi) at around 11 at nite and were driven to the verge of insanity as we could not find even one room empty in any of the hotels. Apparently the whole world had decided to land up at Hampi to spend their Christmas. Finally we did get an air conditioned room in one of the hotels with a statutory warning of checking out before 11 A.M next day. Having found a place to crash ourselves after a long journey of 350kms we slept like logs.

Next day morning post breakfast we went hotel hunting again and finally found a room in a palatial hotel called Shanbagh which could have been mistaken for a palace. It seemed that the owner had decided to build a palace for himself only to realise that a hotel would have been more profitable a venture and hence came up the hotel. Luckily after getting the hotel room we started out towards Hampi and landed up at a place which was straight out of the history books. The hillocks covering the entire area were a treat to the eye. Rocks seemed to precariously hang from everywhere as if nature had decided to delicatly balance them in a weired game. It reminded me of the sight from the hostel of Infosys Hyderabad that overlook hillocks with the same kind of sights though on a much smaller scale than Hampi.

The sights and colours of the place were mindblowing. It was a canvas that had been coloured with the browns of the mountains in the distance, the colourful shops of Hampi bazar, the black stoned idols in the temples of the place, the red uniform of scores of school students who had come on a vacation, the ever inquisitive faces of foreigners who had come to Hampi. It was a sight that made every penny spent on the trip worthwhile.

It is well beleived that "If dreams would have been made out of stone, it would be Hampi". The truth of the statement struck me as we saw the archaeological wonders in front of me. Hampi was the seat of the Vijaynagar kingdom that reached its zenith under the rule of Krishna Deva Raya. The first destination that we visited was the Virupaksha Temple which rises majestically in the Hampi Bazar. The only temple which was not touched by the Mughals still has idols of Shiva, Pampa and Bhuvaneshwari which are worshipped. The tower of the temple casts an inverted image using the same concepts of a pin hole camera at a specific location. At 500 rupees we got a guide to drive us on his auto from one place to another in Hampi. The monolithic statues of Ganesha and Narsimha were awe inspiring in their elegance and magnanimity.

We visited the twin rocks, the Lotus Mahal, the elephant stable and finally landed up to the world famous Vithala temple. The Vithala temple has 56 pillars which when struck in specific manner produce muscial sounds. The sounds varied from those of the tabla, dholak to the harmonium. There was also the world famous Stone Chariot that portrayed exquisite stone work. After all the dreams of a wonderful empire dating 500 yrs back could be well visualised seeing the exquisite stone work.

After a lunch of roti, egg bhurji and paneer we set sail towards Kishkinda crossing the Tungabhadra river which looked no more than a little stream seldom realising that I would be in for a big shock the next day regarding the magnanimity of the same river. The motor boat followed a differential pricing strategy. A concept which is very unfair on a specific class of society but so broadly used in marketing terminology. While it took Indians 5 rupees to cross the river on the motor boat, it tookthe foreigner 10 rupees for the same comfort. But nobody really seemed to care as 10 rupees turns out to be 1/5th of a dollar considering the exchange rate. I guess nobody would seem to care till the rupee starts appreciating dramatically. Kishkinda was a delight to the eyes. There were more foreigners than Indians in this little piece of historic land which one served as the capital for King Sugriv (the king of the apes). It was like a mini cultural hot pot in which people of different countries straight from Australia, Canada, the US to European countries blended together. After renting a moped and a cycle we started exploring Kishkinda. There was a festival in progress some 4 kms from the place we started from. We finally made a fool of ourselves travelling the entire stretch and finding out nothing but a small village mela in progress.

After a delightful coconut water refreshment we again set out exloring the place and finally landed up at a place filled with gigantic rocks that tempted us to rock climb. There were a couple of pretty looking foreigner females (yet another motivation for the rock climbing adventure).

It was quite an experience sitting on top of gigantic rocks and seeing the sun set in the horizon. Kishkinda proved mind blowing.

The night was spent at Hospet sipping beer and eating chicken dishes. Early next morning we set out for the Tungabhadra dam, Chitradurga and our return journey back to Bangalore. The Tunghabhadra which had looked like a little stream the day before on our way to Kishkinda stood before us spreading itself out like a huge sea at the dam. It was so big that the other coast was not at all visible in the morning light. The scene was captivating. The huge lock gates and turbines seemed to covey the enourmosness of the river in front. En route we passed a place that had a windmill park for genrating power. The gigantic windmills seemed to loom over the mountains as they cast huge shadows on the highway beneath. The blades were much larger than 16 wheeled trucks. A small stopover for a picture of the breathtaking windmills got us curious enough to proceed on a trek for reaching the base of the windmills. After a rather tiresome trek stretch of close to a kilometer and half we finally were at the base of these magnanimous mills. It was worth the effort put in to reach them. Beyond the hills which housed the wind mills were vast stretches of land completely devoid of any human population. The highway snaked through the hills and looked like a black winding piece of string from the top of the hills. It was worth every effort we put in to reach the place.

We saw the fort at Chitradurga that has 7 layers of protection from the enemies and finally proceeded towards Bangalore stopping at the same dhaba where we had landed on our way to Hampi. One word of advice that the dhaba owner gave us after posing some rather uncomfortable questions about our salary figures was that "If you earn less than 40000 rupees in a month, its better to open a dhaba." Any comments on the same?