Hampi - A Journey to Lost Glory

I can't just call Hampi as a historical place, it is a place of mystical ruins, a place with cultural heritage, and also a place of mythical monkey kingdom.

Yes, years beyond the great warriors ruled Hampi, it was a famous monkey kingdom known as Kishkinda, where Lord Rama killed the monkey king,Vali, and asked for help to search Sita from Sugreeva.

Hampi is now the most searched historical place in India.

Hampi, a heritage city is bordered by Tungabhadra river on one side and surrounded by huge hills on the other three sides. This made very difficult for the other rulers to acquire Hampi. But finally the deccan sultanates captured Vijayanagara kingdom in the battle of Talikota, destroyed, and ruined it completely. It is believed that it took them almost a year to destroy the Hampi city.  

 

I have tried to picturise the vast hampi in my small blog which has both the information of our travel and also the historical outline.
Saturday, we four decided for a trip to coorg (one of the longings of Mahesh) with two children, but in the sunday morning that too on the way, Satish gave an option to travel to Hampi. Here begins the journey to the mystical place from Bangalore, A journey of 350 km via tumkur, Chitrdurga, and Hospet.
Sunday, we started our journey @ 7 in the morning, tasted the hot and tasty thatte idli at a hotel Pavithra in Kyathsandra and reached hospet @ 3 in the evening for lunch. 

With the heavily filled stomach drove towards the Thungabadra dam, hey hold on for a second I forgot to mention about the mesmerizing river view of Thungabadra on the way to hospet. The river was not making a rumbling sound to be heard from far distance but it was amazingly looking like a moving sea with the waves coming towards us.

 

We reached Thungabadra dam around 5 in the evening to find out that all the internal travel bus
tickets were closed. We decided to walk in the pleasant cool air. The 63 year old Thungabadra dam was looking as if it is dressed with the long and broad green saree. Yes, the dam was almost full. It was scary but there was a welcoming wavy sound from the river. The dam area also has a power generation system, beautiful garden, and a musical fountain. 

 

That night we stayed in Hotel Priyadarshini, Hospet. A good hotel with the tasty food. Next day in the morning, had our breakfast and headed towards Hampi. Around 8.30 in the morning, we stood in front of Virupaksha temple, Hampi in search of a good guide. A guide who could drive us back to hundreds of years and make us understand the fact and the way the real warriors were leading their life.
We wanted to correlate and enhance our knowledge that we had about Vijayanagara kingdom with his expedite information. It is always good to have a tourist guide with us to know and understand the cultural value of the historical cities and the monuments.

 Since it was a one day journey, we were unfortunate to cover only few places in Hampi, but fortunate enough to gather sufficient information about all the visited places from guide. We missed the most heard place in Hampi known as Anegundi as the sun started hiding from us and giving us a hint to head towards Bangalore. Finally without a dual mind Satish drove us back to Bangalore around 3 in the early morning.

I have tried to seize most of the information in this blog that got piled up in our mind from the tourist guide with the list of places that we visited. Let's start with the brief history of Hampi rulers, that we heard from the guide.

Hampi was the capital of Vijayanagara. One of the cultural heritage of the nation on the banks of Thungabadra river.  Many monuments were built between AD 1336-1570, from the times of Harihara-I to Sadasiva Raya. Many royal buildings were raised by Krishnadevaraya, a great warrior of Vijayanagara from Tuluva dynasty.

Many kings from Sangama, Saluva, and Tuluva dynasty ruled Vijayanagara for more than two and a quarter century till its dramatic fall and destruction in 1565 AD. The battle of Rakkasa-Tangadi (Talikota) spelt disaster to the city and empire. It survived yet for another hundred years under the kings of Aravidu dynasty, with the capitals of Penagonda and Chandragiri, but never regained its past glory.

 

The Virupaksha temple houses shiva linga known as Virupaksha. This temple is also known as pampapathi temple. This is still the most sacred and living temple of Hampi.The outstanding vestige is the ceiling paintings of vijayanagara in the ranga mantapa.The noteworthy paintings depicts the ten incarnations of Vishnu, Girija kalyana, and Arjuna piercing the matsyayantra, more are there, but I remember only this.There are series of broken mantapas on either side of the temple. It is believed to be known as bazaar where people used to sell pearls and diamonds.

 

 

 

 

 

Sasive Kalu Ganesha is a huge monolithic sculpture of Lord Ganesha. The image is carved such a manner that Ganesha is seated on the lap of his mother parvathi (from the backside). It is believed that the merchants from Andra pradesh got enormous gain on selling the mustard seed in the market and hence they build this temple known as Sasive Kalu Ganesha.

 

 

 Kadle Kalu Ganesha is also a monolithic image.It is surrounded by tall slender pillars of the mantapa. It is well sculptured with the depictions of daily life of common man and various goddess.
 

 

  Lakshmi Narasimha is a huge monolithic sculpture and is one of the most outstanding sculptural art of Vijayanagara. The image of Goddess Lakshmi, seated over the left lap of Narsimha is mutilated. Only the left arm of Lakshmi embracing Narasimha is seen.

  

Badavi Linga is nearly 3 meters high with the lower part of the linga immersed in water throughout the year. It is housed in a chamber with an opening in the front and on the top. This super structure though present is in a dilapidated condition.

The palaces has a series of structures in the form of rooms, large halls, terraced structures built of gold and sandal wood, which was burnt completely by muslim kings. It took with well laid garden and water system.
 

 The Lotus mahal is a built in an indo-islamic style of architecture, and is a two storeyed structure with the facility to store water on the top of it. The water storage provided a cool effect on Lotus mahal during summer time for the queens. Krishnadevaraya used to be in war for more than 6 to 8 months in a year and during that time his two queens used to spend the days in Lotus mahal with full security.
 

The Hazaar Rama temple is a beautiful temple. All the walls on this temple has the carvings and inscriptions depicting the story of Ramayana, which cannot be easily understood unless you go with the tourist guide. As you might miss the continuity of thousands of carvings and inscriptions from one wall to another.
 

The Vitthala temple is one of the important temples found in hampi, Many kings added many new architectural edifices within the temple. Krishnadevaraya made substantial additions to it. The courtyard of the temple has a hundred pillard mantapa, much framed stone chariot, and a garuda shrine in the front. It is told that Krishna devaraya build a mantapa with musical pillars for his wife Chinnadevi to dance (the way she showed her devotion to god). Each pillar housed in the mantapa has the carvings of different musical instruments and it is believed that the pillar produces sound of the particular carvings it has been etched with. Most of the pillars were ruined by muslim kings and now ruined by the local people.

 

 

 

 

The Deccan muslims planned to destroy the Hampi completely, but left it incomplete and made this as a ruined historical visiting place.  
 

My First Tattoo

Showing care and love towards each other often, if required or not strengthens the bonding between each other. It increases the confidence and make us relaxed together.

 I always dreamt of having a realistic tattoo to express my love towards my husband and to celebrate the success of our relationship. A unique tattoo with the identity of mine and Mahesh along with an event that I would like to rejoice is what I was thinking of, and this thought figured into a beautiful design.

Veer Hegde, from Eternal Expression Tattoo Studio did an amazing effort in tattooing this indelible design on my hand. He is the only person from whom I got a positive response to do the thumb impression tattoo in smaller size. Veer has an amazing patience for tattooing this for nearly six hours, and is fully dedicated to give his best by doing it in detail, in a smaller size tattoo.

 I am so happy! it’s been three days since I got tattooed this, even then I can't stop gazing at my tattoo.

Veer Hegde is reachable at 9742863993

Cherishable Moments of Ooty

We behaved as children in front of our children as they were sitting silent in toy train and watching us playing dumb charades. We shouted more than them while watching the 5D movie, and can’t forget the way I was afraid to enter the Dinosaur park.

Can I call this as a family trip or a children's summer vacation, or a get together of two families, or an absolute required break for the heavily occupied techies. Well! you are the right person to decide what actually fits in after reading the entire blog.

 

Why are you going to this place in this season?

Why this place? Why can’t you go to Coorg?

Nothing is there in this place!

This is how my friends commented when I informed them about the trip. But we had a wonderful, entertaining, and a good memorable trip to Ooty from Bangalore for two days, and the excitement started from Bandipur forest.

Yes, it was the first time forest entry for the children. They were scared enough to close the car window soon after entering the forest, and excited enough to search for wild animals without blinking their eyes till they reach the Madhumalai forest safari point.

We were in search of tiger and elephant in the Bandipur and Madhumalai forest, but worth enough to catch a leopard in our eyes that was waiting for a hunt around 4.30 in the evening while we were on safari.

From Madhumalai forest, with the talk of leopard, peacock, and deer we started climbing Nilgiri hills through Masinagudi route to feel the cool breeze. Around eight in the night, reached Ooty and rested in a good spacious hotel at the reasonable rate.

First day in Ooty, visited Doddabetta, the highest mountain peak of Nilgiri, and then tasted a good aromatic tea in the tea museum. Later headed towards Coonoor in a local bus just to board the toy train from Coonoor to Ooty.

A good greenery stretch with three tunnels and two high bridges from Coonoor to Ooty. It was a fun filled one hour journey in toy train as we were playing dumb charades of guessing movie names. I wish I would have captured those wonderful expressions given by everyone for movie names.

How can I forget to inform you about Black Thunder where we spent our evening. All credit goes to Ashish and Sushruth as they were forcing Mahesh to take them to Black Thunder Dinosaur park. While watching the 5D movie, we shouted like as we are going to fall and die from the Roller Coaster.
I still do not know why I was afraid of entering the Dinosaur park even when I know the fact that it is man-made park. Oops! Aunty was hugging me tight from back in such a way that even my husband does not do it regularlyJ.

Ah! second day was bright and colourful as we were walking in the Rose garden. Do you believe that there are roses with 100 petals? The beautiful and colourful roses mesmerized us.

Hey wait! I didn't told you about Avalanche experience. On second day, we got up early in the morning to see Avalanche Lake as we had heard about seeing multi-coloured water in the lake early in the morning.

Plan was to leave children and elders in hotel and we four of them to go. But the children got up before us to come with us. We travelled 26 km for 1.5 hours to find out nobody near the lake check point. We were supposed to take entry ticket and walk one km further to see Avalanche Lake. The langoors welcomed us with a weird sound when we got out of the car. Since it was a forest area, we didn't wanted to take risk and hence got into the car. Satish did a small trekking and went near the lake to have some nice photos of Avalanche Lake in his phone.

Now back to Rose garden, from rose garden we started getting down from Nilgiri hills through Gudhalur route. On the way, had a good but costly horse riding near the Nilgiri view point.

Pykara falls, Pykara dam, and Pykara boat house are also the memorable places we visited on the way while returning from Nilgiri. Pykara is a village and has a river, which flows over a series of water falls known as Pykara falls. The Pykara boat house on the reservoir is a good, attractive, and must visit place to go for a boating on the Pykara river.

It's sad that we didn't see tiger even while returning from the forest, but we are happy that we saw four elephants at two instances, because of Satish's eagle eyes.

At nine in the night, we reached Gundlupet and rested the whole night over there. Next day in the morning, headed to Mysore to see the wild animals under the human surveillance. uf! what a summer this time in Bangalore and Mysore, We are facing this much temperature for the first time in our 30 years of life. Children had a list of wild animals to see, and by the time they covered the 4-km zoo, all the checklist items were ticked.

After having a relaxing and delicious lunch on the bank of Kaveri river in the  hotel Mayura Riverview, srirangapatna, we headed to our home sweet home in Bangalore, The Mandya and Bidadi traffic played a huge role in tiring my husband and making us to reach home by 11 in the night.

This trip made we four of us to share a wonderful, memorable, and an entertaining days spent in Ooty. A well known honeymoon place in south India can also be a good summer vacation place when you go along with all your dear and near loved ones.