First Day to Temple Town!

Barely able to open my eyes, with little bit of white light falling into them I woke up.

6:30 a.m., 55, B3, Hampi express!

Farms and farms everywhere!

We gathered our luggage and finally after long journey of 9 hours, we finally reached Hospete. When you see foreigners and school children on trips on platform, at the junction itself it becomes clear that you  have arrived to a tourist destination.

On the way to the resort, my thoughts took up a new route with the bus showing us beautiful mountains of Kishkinda area. How will Hampi be? Will it accept me the way I am? Will I be able to shed my touristy layer and become a part of Hampi? What will I do if people are fond of giving monoword answers only?

 The resort was beautiful, in lap of nature, it did seem like nature itself. Circular cottages, beautiful rooms. Sometime in life I had read about architecture which matches with the surroundings. This one did seem like one. After having South Indian breakfast and the best sweet in the world, paysam, we started with our first day.

Markets always attracted me a lot, possibilities of crafts anywhere is my interest and for Hampi I really wanted to know the base of crafts. Stone carved items, Leather bags, Tshirts with OM written on them consisted most part of the market, place where we got down. As we walked to the river, paddy fields on left side made me think coexistence of fields and human market together. Walking down the staircase we had no idea we will land up on such a beautiful place. But there stood the beautiful but fierce Tungabhadra River. Calm on surface, vicious inside. More beautiful was Virupaksha looking as if emerging from River. After crossing the river, again the market lanes.

And then we entered Virupaksha with a warning “no camera usage inside”. But inside everybody was already clicking pictures with mobile phones. There stood giant temple with beautiful sculptures on it. Long and slender the figures were, exactly like form of temple. Inside there stood giant elephant on a platform giving ashirwad to people, seemed as if the whole platform was made up for him only. All the pillars in Hampi had a peculiar style, it had two supporting for roof emerging from one same pillar. Inside of the temple, there were paintings and sculptures of a few scenes, a few ruined, a few newly made. The inverted Gopuram at back did make me realise that 15^th century technology was no less than ours, magnificent in its own ways.

There were a lot of small temples surrounding Virupaksha Temple. Seemed like guards to me. 

Then we walked a bit more to see other beautifully carved temples and then had lunch after which we hired cycles to go to LOST Vithalla temple. This is what it seemed to me, a secret place about which nobody knew about. Surrounded completely by big mountains it was a magnificent view to see such  beautifully carved temples and platforms. Every pillar said something about Hindu Mythology or culture. This was the most beautiful place in Hampi, calm and mountains seemed like a protective bubble to the place. Little did we know initially that climbing up mountain and then down which completely left me lethargic will lead to such beautiful discovery for own self.

The next after watching big nandi statue we cycled to Ganesha Temple, it was the biggest and most marvellous statue, so big and so perfectly lit by light from outside such as only Ganesha was seen and not the background at all. The statue was beautifully placed in half light.

And our last stop was Narsimha Temple which had a huge Narsimha statue and a huge Shivalinga!

One thing I realised was either in Hampi there are no Shrines in Temples or there are huge statues!

The day was very tiring today but eventful. It did leave in me an insight to see the rest of monuments in Hampi!

I was spellbound by the sculptures on pillars of temples and I really wanted to know about their relevance to Hindu Culture, Dance and Music so that I could trace the culture back till there.