Hampi

As you might already know from my previous post, my family and I went on a holiday to Hubli and Bijapur. You can view the previous post by clicking here. After coming back to Hubli, we left our grandparents at their house and then left for Hampi.

Day 1

We departed from Hubli at 11:45 a.m. and reached Hampi at 3:30 p.m. After checking into a hotel we walked around Hampi. First we went to a temple. The architecture inside the temple was very nice. We left the temple and went to the river nearby. As the river is very dirty we decided not to step in to the river. Afterwards we went to a place which had a few rocks and ruins. We climbed a few steps and then stopped and headed back to our hotel as it was getting dark. Then we went to Hampi's famous restaurant for dinner - The Mango Tree.

Day 2

We had breakfast at around 7:30 a.m. Then we hired a guide and an auto-rickshaw. The guide agreed to take us around Hampi. First we went to a temple called the Virupaksha Temple.

Virupaksha Temple

The guide told us that the Chalukya Dynasty started building this temple. The whole temple was built with stone from a hill. All the plain walls of the temple were built by the Chalukya’s. The architecture was done later by the Vijayanagara king. We also saw a temple elephant that was 21 years old. After the elephant had bath in the river it came back to the temple. If we gave it money it would give the money to its mahout and then bless us. After looking at the Virupaksha temple we went to other monuments of Hampi. The architecture was very nice everywhere. The Ramayana was sculpted only in one of the monuments. All other monuments did not really appeal to me, that is why I have not written about any of them. We had lunch and then went back to our hotel room. At 3:00 p.m. we went out again. We saw a few more monuments and came back. We had dinner and then slept immediately.

Virupaksha Temple

Day 3

My family and I woke up at 7:00 a.m. We had breakfast and then left for a small hill. We crossed the hill and saw a temple called the Achuttaraya temple. The temple’s architecture was beautiful. After that we left to a place called Anegundi. To reach Anegundi we had to cross the river. We first walked along the river, see the old bridge that connected Hampi and Anegundi and then crossed over to the other side. As we had walked a lot, I was very tired and decided to sit back in the hired autorickshaw. So I did not see many monuments. I saw just 1 temple, whereas my mother and sister saw 2 other temples. After they finished we all came back to Hampi. We had lunch and then slept for a while. After we woke up we went to a cycle shop to rent cycles and cycled a bit. In Hampi the roads are not meant for cycling because there are many ups and downs. The up-slopes are so steep that I had to push my cycle 2 or 3 times. We rode 6 km in total. Then we returned the cycles and went for dinner. For dinner I had Italian Pizza made in a wooden oven. Afterwards we went to our hotel room and slept.

Day 4

We woke up at 5:00 a.m. and left for Bangalore. We reached Bangalore at 3:30 p.m. Our long trip finally came to an end!! You can view a few videos by clicking the below links:
Elephant Blessing People
Elephant walking back to the temple after having it's bath
Elephant taking blessings from a god. (Must Watch)

                              

A few miscellaneous pictures:

(Click on a picture to enlarge it.) (The panaroma pictures look better if you enlarge them).