Goa to Bangalore

Day 6: The Hampi Chronicles

September 24th 2009

With more than 500 world heritage sites dotting the ruins, it is very difficult to see all of them in a span of 3 days of even a week, so for half a day we hired a rickshaw guy to show us the main sites across the place (600 rupees). Don’t do that. Much of the fun in seeing these ancient monuments is to know a bit about their history. 

 Ask some of the ASI guides to show you around the place and they usually divide the tour into two parts, the temples in the first half of the day and the Royal enclaves in the second half. (HS Krishna Kumar 08394 – 241411, 9449981479). The Virupaksha temple complex inside the Hampi bazaar is the only live temple and daily pujas are offered here and one of the shrines here can be rented our for marriages. Lakshmi, the resident elephant, blesses each one and an underground temple, the only one of its kind in the country, has both the statues of Vishnu and the linga. 

The main temples here have impressive wall carvings and beautiful ceiling paintings depicting various avatars of the Hindu gods and ancient tales. The Vitthala temple complex to the north of the hampi has beautiful carvings, musical pillars, remnants of huge ancient gold bazaars and the Kings’ balance – a stone weighing scale for the king to sit on and weighed against gold and precious gems. The Vijaynagar empire which flourished under the reign of Krishnadevraya was also famous for its sewage and water connection works and a visit to the stepped tanks, monolithic platform offer the visitor a peep into its wonderful past.