Hampi in India – take 2
Sunday, 9 October 2016This is my second Hampi report, following the earlier account of a visit to the Chandramauleshwara Temple. I only had two days in Hampi, there’s so much to see another day or two would have worked very well.
▲ In the Royal Enclosure the imposing Mahnavami Dibba platform is another Hampi structure with impressive bas reliefs like this elephant parade.
▲ As I emerged from the Chandrashekhar Temple and headed towards the Octagonal Baths a herd of goats wandered by between me and the Saraswati Temple.
◄ An amused-looking image of Narasimha, an incarnation or avatar of the God Vishnu, in the Lakshmi Narasimha Temple.
▲ Two sari-clad women paddled me (and my bicycle) across the Tungabhadra River in a coracle, another coracle carrying a whole happy family came by in the other direction. Although I usually think of coracles as an Irish invention they’re also found in England, Wales and a number of countries in Asia including Vietnam.
◄ I liked the stone stairways cut into many sloping rockfaces, on a rainy afternoon these women were coming down a slippery slope on Hemakuta Hill.
▲ On my final afternoon I climbed up the Matanga Hill to look down on the Achyutaraya Bazaar (the ‘Courtesan Street) and the Varaha Temple and encountered this sadhu who had moved in to a small Hanuman Temple. He spoke good English and we chatted about his sadhu life (he was heading off to the Himalaya as soon as the monsoon finished) and the assorted improvements he had made to his temple home, he was quite house proud.
▲ Finally ‘Sound Horn’ is a request emblazoned across the back of many Indian buses and trucks, this was a ‘sound horn at the corner’ warning to which some comic had added a useful ‘Y’.
