A weekend in 16th Century

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We had been planning to schedule a trip to Hampi and Daroji since a long time. Finally, it was during January 2011 that we effectively were able to organize one along with our crew.

We started form Bangalore at about 22:00 hrs and reached Hampi early in the morning. The overnight journey through the gutter-filled roads made us feel slightly tired and thus we decided to take a small break before proceeding further. We checked-in at a recently opened resort, “Jungle Lodges”, where there were some construction works going on because of this. However, the hotel was clean and comfortable enough for us to relax and freshen up.

It was bright sunny day and after a delicious and heavy lunch, we kicked-off from the hotel at about 13:00 hrs on our Tempo Traveller expecting to capture some good frames during our visit to the Sloth Bear sanctuary. Myself, along with Anto and Anand decided to hire a separate jeep as we were desperate about doing an additional bird-hunt on our way to the sanctuary. And, we were lucky enough to get glimpses of birds like the wagtails, lapwing and parakeets.

It was about dusk and was getting dark by the time we reached the sanctuary. Though the sanctuary is relatively new, which began in 1994 in the eastern plains of Karnataka, it has proved to be a suitable habitat for the Indian Sloth Bears in a span of few years. The rock-strewn hillocks that stretch between Daroji of Sandur taluk and Ramasagar of Hospet Taluk in Bellary district have been the abode of Indian Sloth Bears since ages. In October 1994, the Government of Karnataka declared 5,587.30 hectares of Bilikallu reserve forest as Daroji Bear Sanctuary. We took special permissions from the authorities for walking down to the hillock to see the Sloth Bears. It was dark and photographing Sloth bear in low light was a real challenge, but managed to get some good pics.

As it was getting late, we returned after spending some time with the Sloth Bears. After enjoying the campfire and a fabulous dinner that were arranged for us, we went to sleep for the day.

Basava, who came as our tour guide, was extremely good and he was narrating the stories of each and almost every sculptures / monuments that we came across. As I was not interested in history and neither did I have any historic awareness, he strived hard to help me (and many others in our team) recollect the history chapters that we had been taught in our schools.

Hampi is a village in northern Karnataka, which is famous for the ruins of the capital city of the Vijayanagara Empire. Hampi is bounded by the torrential Tungabhadra river on one side and by defensible hills on the other three sides. It also continues to be an important city of various religious as well as historical monuments that belonged to the olden days. The place was destroyed by the Muslim Sultanates in 1565 after the battle of Tallikota. As the village is originally at Vijayanagara, we may obviously confuse it with the ruined city itself. The ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed as the Group of Monuments at Hampi.

Stone chariot
This architectural masterpiece is an unbelievable piece of art which was carved out of giant monolithic pillars. This stone chariot is an icon by itself and demands special attention.

I had my photography gears with me for capturing the shots of the famous Vittala temple and its surroundings. The green planes, the steep boulder hills and the extravaganza of stone architecture, all are extremely rich in content that would lure any photographers. Non-commercial photography is permitted at almost all locations in Hampi.

Being that the Vittala temple existed during the Vijayanagar period, it is considered to be the epicentre of Hampi’s tourist attractions. The temple is built in the form of a sprawling campus with compound walls and gateway towers. There are many halls, pavilions and temples located inside this campus.

Talarigatta gate
This Kannada word, “Talarigatta”, means a toll gate, which probably would have been its original intent. This was one among the main entry points into the capital city from the river end. Over the years, this structure has been considerably damaged.

Pushkarani
I had been longing to see the beautiful octagonal stepped pond called Pushkarani, which had by now become prominent in several Hindi / Tamil movies.

We reached Virupaksha temple which was then crowded by westerners and Asian tourists. This gave me an opportunity to pick and capture some unique faces from them, which I didn’t hesitate to. In-fact, that was my debut experimentation of street photography and well, I must say my attempt wasn’t that bad. Here are a few of them for you:

The next in our itinerary were to visit the Lotus Mahal and the elephant stables, which also gave us enough, beautiful frames to capture. We were getting late that we rushed back to the resort for our journey back to Bangalore.

I really feel that 2 days aren’t sufficient enough to visit this place completely and so, I’ve decided to revisit this place for complete my journey to the historical Hampi.