Day 83-86: Hampi — IndefinitelyOOO

The beach weeks had been glorious but I was also beginning to feel a little bone idle and ‘touristy’ so our next destination was a wonderful injection of ‘real India’ again. We fell hard for Hampi and its treasures. Packed days of discovery covering nearly every hectare on foot and with the three wheeled assistance of Tiger, a very charming young Tuk Tuk driver who we got chatting to outside our hotel and who’s life story we knew by the end of day three.

Walking for miles around Hampi’s haunting ruins made me realise just how much I’d missed our previous intrepidness, finishing the days knackered but elated at what we’d seen, climbed, explored (I know, I know us and a million others… Stanley and Livingstone we are not but India has a way of making you feel like that).

Monolithic statues of bug-eyed gods share the landscape with breath-taking temple after temple and giant boulders which circle you precariously. But it was within one of these underground temple complexes where our gasps were most audible – stepping as we did into a vaulted room only to glance up and see two dozen bats hanging above us. It might have taken three or four goes to muster my courage to take a close up photo but my goodness they were magnificent.

This general giddiness was our undoing though … a combination of late train complacency (“they never, ever make up time do they…”) and one last g&t to toast our amazing time here … resulted in us standing, stranded on platform 1 to Mysore – our train a dot in the distance and an expensive overnight taxi in our immediate future. (NB. Inbetween I may have raised my voice mildly at Jacko across the concourse for prioritising getting yet more selfies with locals as I tried unsuccessfully to find another train route with the station manager).

*"A day is hardly enough to take it in*
"

The ancient city kingdom of Hampi is centuries dead now; it came and went in the space of only two hundred years or so, six hundred years ago but during that time was wealthy beyond imagination; merchants from Persia and further east recorded diamonds being sold by the kilo in the city bazaar and the buildings and temples dripping with opulence and luxury. In its short existence, Hampi’s rulers commissioned imposing palaces and temples, military and administrative architecture and the ruins of this long-gone civilisation are incredibly well-preserved.

Although the land surrounding this region is green and fertile, Hampi itself lies across a valley of rock, flat sheets of granite stretching to the horizons, punctuated by colossal rock formations the size of tower blocks or cairns of boulders, each the size of houses. And actual buildings, ruined and long deserted. Hundreds and hundreds of temples, pillared colonnades, palaces, market squares, baths and living quarters. There’s no moisture here and barely any dust even. After rumours of the city’s fabulous riches spread and the Mughal hordes descended to smash the Vijayangara dynasty into history, the city was never repopulated and was left to bake and set under the remorseless sun, which helps account for the good condition of its major buildings today.

Building a city on rock, out of rock, the Vijayangara developed a specific style of megalithic architecture; everything is made of stone, and huge individual pieces of it, carved to purpose and engraved with intricate designs. In the grounds of the royal palace stands a statue of a chariot, the stone worked in fantastic detail. It’s not a statue, though. The stone wheels rotate and the kings would be pulled around the campus by teams of elephants in a chariot as big as a roomy caravan and carved entirely from stone. We visit the stables where those elephants were kept, like a row of terraced houses, individual pens with - unsurprisingly - enormous doors.

It feels a little like Pompeii. The city is vast and we spend a whole day walking around what remains of it, practically alone. Even dogs and monkeys know better than to spend too long in this oven. The scale of the place is overwhelming; a day is hardly enough to take in the remains of a whole civilisation.

Amongst the abandoned ruins, one temple is still working and in it we are pleased to meet Lakshmi, the temple elephant. After our sadness when we came across Madurai's temple elephant - a sad and neglected, badly-treated animal - we had done some research. Here, we were reassured that Lakshmi is loved and honoured and spends her mornings being exercised and washed in the river; a well-attended daily event, and the rest of her time happily munching in space and comfort.

We need to talk about  the elephant in the room — *We need to talk about the elephant in the room*

As the day cools we climb one of the natural rock formations to watch the sun go down on the valley. Hampi is a strange, otherworldly place and a fascinating one. Definitely a highlight of our time here.