Hampi/Vijayanagara PHOTO POST (see last post for the writing)
The photo post! Please go back and read the all-writing post if you haven't; it gives many more of my thoughts and impressions than this post will. This is going to be the accelerated visual tour of the Hampi Field Trip, with little snippets of facts and not so much description. If that's what you're looking for, then this is the post for you.
Starting off! Here we are at the Outreach School in Bangalore, teaching the kids how to do wax-resist. BB leads off with the introduction, while grades 3-6 sit listening.
A couple of the Bombay Girls teaching the little kiddies.
And as fast as you can say "sleeper class reserved," we are in Hampi. This is the exterior of the Vitthala Temple.
A small child listening to our guide tell us about the "singing pillars" (carefully carved and tuned granite pillars that produce clear, distinct tones when hit.)
An ancient temple tree (frangipani) at Vitthala Temple, plus a couple of women hired to do nothing but pick the weeds from between the stones.
Our favourite watering-hole, the Mango Tree restaurant on the edge of the Tungabhadra River. Tasty food, lovely views, unparalleled serenity. Highly recommended!
Lotus Mahal at the Zenana Enclosure. Muslim architecture.
Elephant stables at the Zenana Enclosure. Legit! Elephant stables! Imagine the king's elephant handlers walking over here, selecting the lucky elephant for the day, and walking it back over to the palace to pick up his majesty. Not a bad life.
And then there's the luxury of the Queen's Bath. In ruins now, but it's about 15m x 15m and BEAUTIFUL. She would travel there from the palace with her attendants and the rest of the wives, and they would bathe while the king watched lecherously on, and female archers patrolled the top of the walls to fend off intruders.
This girl is one of my bass students! Here she is drawing the Queen's Bath. (It was an art trip, after all.)
Our preferred mode of transportation around Hampi were our delightful bicycles. (I keep getting myself into trouble because in India, "bike" always means motorcycle, and "cycle" means bicycle.)
Boulders, boulders everywhere. I was climbing constantly.
Vishnu in his man-lion form. This statue is 6m tall! GIANT!
And with monkeys all around! Langur monkeys, also known as Hanuman monkeys. It made the whole scene very much like Disney's Jungle Book.
This picture sort of sums up Hampi: monkeys, crazy boulders, ancient temples nestled in the boulders.
Virupaksha temple. Note that it's very similar to the giant Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, but without all the garish paint. Methinks the old version is more aesthetically appealing. Oh well.
Again, crazy boulders, temples perched on boulders. Check out the little signal tower on the left - these were used like those neat fire-signal-towers in the Lord of the Rings, every tower within sight of another tower.
View down from a large pile of boulders that I climbed.
Giant platform. Not much else to say. The dark stone is not dirty; it's a different kind of stone, plundered by the king and brought back to his palace.
Rosie and I imitating the carvings of the archers on the wall. Yes, I know that it's not a very good archery stance. Many people have informed me. I am IMITATING THE CARVING.
Carvings in black stone pillars brought from Orissa.
Sunset! PM and I stopped to photograph it and ended up biking back in the dark, on a road with no streetlights, almost getting hopelessly lost in Hampi. Luckily got some directions by a couple of guys waiting at the bus stop.
Sunrise near the Octagonal Bath. Beautiful light, totally deserted. That was one of the most lovely things about this trip - there was NOBODY else at Hampi. We kept running into the handful of other tourists over and over and over again.
Octagonal Bath.
Coracle ride on the Tungabhadra!
The Sunken Temple.
View of the Two Sisters rocks from a giant pile of boulders. And goats.
Please... camera... don't blow away!
Jurmey 1 and Jurmey 2, on top of the same pile of boulders.
Hampi Bazaar, with all its colorful hippie clothing that nobody buys but stoned European hippie tourists.
Thaly! Seriously, this is the best idea ever. A thaly involves rice, some kind of bread (chapathi, pourri, naan, etc), papad, and then a selection of dishes in little metal bowls, as you can see. Sometimes the ENTIRE large dish is ringed with small bowls! Different regions include different dishes. Every thaly is different - but all are delicious! It's my ideal presentation of food. All eaten with your fingers, of course. YUM.
Sunrise on top of Matanga Hill. We woke up at 5am to see this, and climbed the hill in the dark.
But it was worth it.
So worth it!
View of Hampi Bazaar and Virupaksha temple.
The ubiquitous monkeys!
Tungabhadra Dam
And to close, a teaser of the long weekend in Bangalore: the flower vendors in City Market.
That's all, folks!
tally-ho,
Jenn
Starting off! Here we are at the Outreach School in Bangalore, teaching the kids how to do wax-resist. BB leads off with the introduction, while grades 3-6 sit listening.
A couple of the Bombay Girls teaching the little kiddies.
And as fast as you can say "sleeper class reserved," we are in Hampi. This is the exterior of the Vitthala Temple.
A small child listening to our guide tell us about the "singing pillars" (carefully carved and tuned granite pillars that produce clear, distinct tones when hit.)
An ancient temple tree (frangipani) at Vitthala Temple, plus a couple of women hired to do nothing but pick the weeds from between the stones.
Our favourite watering-hole, the Mango Tree restaurant on the edge of the Tungabhadra River. Tasty food, lovely views, unparalleled serenity. Highly recommended!
Lotus Mahal at the Zenana Enclosure. Muslim architecture.
Elephant stables at the Zenana Enclosure. Legit! Elephant stables! Imagine the king's elephant handlers walking over here, selecting the lucky elephant for the day, and walking it back over to the palace to pick up his majesty. Not a bad life.
And then there's the luxury of the Queen's Bath. In ruins now, but it's about 15m x 15m and BEAUTIFUL. She would travel there from the palace with her attendants and the rest of the wives, and they would bathe while the king watched lecherously on, and female archers patrolled the top of the walls to fend off intruders.
This girl is one of my bass students! Here she is drawing the Queen's Bath. (It was an art trip, after all.)
Our preferred mode of transportation around Hampi were our delightful bicycles. (I keep getting myself into trouble because in India, "bike" always means motorcycle, and "cycle" means bicycle.)
Boulders, boulders everywhere. I was climbing constantly.
Vishnu in his man-lion form. This statue is 6m tall! GIANT!
And with monkeys all around! Langur monkeys, also known as Hanuman monkeys. It made the whole scene very much like Disney's Jungle Book.
This picture sort of sums up Hampi: monkeys, crazy boulders, ancient temples nestled in the boulders.
Virupaksha temple. Note that it's very similar to the giant Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, but without all the garish paint. Methinks the old version is more aesthetically appealing. Oh well.
Again, crazy boulders, temples perched on boulders. Check out the little signal tower on the left - these were used like those neat fire-signal-towers in the Lord of the Rings, every tower within sight of another tower.
View down from a large pile of boulders that I climbed.
Giant platform. Not much else to say. The dark stone is not dirty; it's a different kind of stone, plundered by the king and brought back to his palace.
Rosie and I imitating the carvings of the archers on the wall. Yes, I know that it's not a very good archery stance. Many people have informed me. I am IMITATING THE CARVING.
Carvings in black stone pillars brought from Orissa.
Sunset! PM and I stopped to photograph it and ended up biking back in the dark, on a road with no streetlights, almost getting hopelessly lost in Hampi. Luckily got some directions by a couple of guys waiting at the bus stop.
Sunrise near the Octagonal Bath. Beautiful light, totally deserted. That was one of the most lovely things about this trip - there was NOBODY else at Hampi. We kept running into the handful of other tourists over and over and over again.
Octagonal Bath.
Coracle ride on the Tungabhadra!
The Sunken Temple.
View of the Two Sisters rocks from a giant pile of boulders. And goats.
Please... camera... don't blow away!
Jurmey 1 and Jurmey 2, on top of the same pile of boulders.
Hampi Bazaar, with all its colorful hippie clothing that nobody buys but stoned European hippie tourists.
Thaly! Seriously, this is the best idea ever. A thaly involves rice, some kind of bread (chapathi, pourri, naan, etc), papad, and then a selection of dishes in little metal bowls, as you can see. Sometimes the ENTIRE large dish is ringed with small bowls! Different regions include different dishes. Every thaly is different - but all are delicious! It's my ideal presentation of food. All eaten with your fingers, of course. YUM.
Sunrise on top of Matanga Hill. We woke up at 5am to see this, and climbed the hill in the dark.
But it was worth it.
So worth it!
View of Hampi Bazaar and Virupaksha temple.
The ubiquitous monkeys!
Tungabhadra Dam
And to close, a teaser of the long weekend in Bangalore: the flower vendors in City Market.
That's all, folks!
tally-ho,
Jenn
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5:18 PM
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