[G-BoleroBoy]

hey Samurai, read your travelogue and was following closely. Was disappointed to read that you did not go inside Virupaksha temple. I am assuming you did not even in next part and disclosing an interesting piece that I saw in that temple - and I cannot hold it back any further.

There is a pin-hole camera concept implemented in that temple. Inside the temple there is a small place where a small portion of wall is painted white. The huge Gopura image beams on to this wall upside down at around 6pm (during sunset) through a hole in the main temple.

I was actually surprised to see this amount of engineering gone in to make that huge Gopura display on wall in upside down. Pin-Hole camera concept

[Steeroid]

Thanks for that Samurai - I've been wanting to visit Hampi for a while but have never actually managed to make it there. The story of an extremely rich and super-prosperous empire basically in the middle of nowhere was quite fascinating - this wasnt a port, it had no hinterland, and it did not have a specific commodity or USP that made people flock there. Despite having nothing, it seems to have thrived for a while, creating huge buildings for history to remember it by.

Sort of like Dubai...

[DKG]

Samurai

You have clearly put in a lot of effort to study Hampi's history and write your blog giving us some perspective. That truly is remarkable. Not many people would take the time to do what you just did. We owe you a big THANKS!!

Heritage sites and history are nothing but reflections of humanity and the mind we all inherit. In history you see how this mind through greed, insecurity, violence and depravity destroys mindlessly. In history you also see the beauty, the vision, the spirit of endeavour and enterprise, of innovation and art reflecting in music, paintings, sculpture, traditions, and architecture.

Whether it is Hampi or Rome, these places tell stories about human beings and their lives. To appreciate or resent what you see is purely again a reflection of the quality of your mind and perhaps an opportunity to understand ourselves better.

Travel is and will remain the greatest university and as someone once said " He who has not travelled the world has not read even the first page of the book of life"

Great work Sir and thanks once again. I better start reading the story of Hampi before I visit this magnificent world heritage site.

[maddy42]

Great travellogue samurai. I had visited hampi and i have seen that pin hole concept in Virupaksha temple. Well what we were told by the guides was that few of the structures which are left standing is due to the Islamic style of architecture in them. Domes are usually seen in the mughal architecture.

[harshavardhan]

Comparing Rome with Hampi is not right. Hampi did not have the luxury of Port / good hinterland which is essential for development of a place (especially during the era in question). Geographically too Hampi has sweltering heat and is an arid zone. As rightly pointed by a few of them, one should give credit to the Vijaynagara rulers for having fostered development and built a stunning city.

- nickatnite -
Please read about the history of both Rome and Hampi before commenting. If you are fasinated and stunned by Rome after seeing it, fine. Visit Hampi and then comment about the place.

There are many of us who have seen the present day Rome and Hampi. Each has its own charm and History. None of us have seen the then cities. We have to rely on the Historians, Scriptures, Existing buildings / ruins, coins etc and form an opinion. Passing careless comment without good knowledge of History amounts to loosetalk.

-Harshavardhan

[akbaree]

Originally Posted by DKG

Heritage sites and history are nothing but reflections of humanity and the mind we all inherit. In history you see how this mind through greed, insecurity, violence and depravity destroys mindlessly. In history you also see the beauty, the vision, the spirit of endeavour and enterprise, of innovation and art reflecting in music, paintings, sculpture, traditions, and architecture.

Whether it is Hampi or Rome, these places tell stories about human beings and their lives. To appreciate or resent what you see is purely again a reflection of the quality of your mind and perhaps an opportunity to understand ourselves better.

Travel is and will remain the greatest university and as someone once said " He who has not travelled the world has not read even the first page of the book of life"

@DKG: very well said.

You may like to add Power to the list which drives people towards destruction. Many wars/battles were fought just for more Power.

[msdivy]

Again a great travelogue !!

Originally Posted by csentil

Actually its quite surprising that a lot of folks in Karnataka have not visited Hampi. I guess its because of the distance involved and probably the heat factor in summer !!
...

When people travel, they expect to see magnificent buildings, lakes, gardens, waterfalls, beaches. But what they get in Hampi is ruins. In fact many are disappointed after visiting. Other factor is location - there isn't any other place nearby, so that people can club and visit together. Also a bit of background history makes the visit interesting. But not many do this.

Originally Posted by Steeroid

...
Sort of like Dubai...

But Dubai has oil !

Also the jester-king combo of Krishnadevaraya & Tenali Rama is as famous as Akbar-Birbal.

[GutsyGibbon]

Originally Posted by rkg

the entire book of robert swell is available freely on the net.
A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar By Robert Swell-Book 1 Chapter 3

Thanks very much for posting this link.

Samurai,
Great job on the pics as usual. And an equally awesome writeup. I wish I had the drive/enthu you posess.
-GG

[Steeroid]

Originally Posted by msdivy

But Dubai has oil !

Nope. Abu Dhabi has oil, not Dubai. Dubai has just enough to be self-sufficient.

[Samurai]

As I mentioned before, some of the accounts have been heavily corrupted in translation. For example, Nicolo Conti didn’t write his account. But he was asked to dictate it to Pope’s secretary when he returned to Rome. And this is what turned out:

The inhabitants of this region marry as many wives as they please, who are burnt with their dead husbands. Their king is more powerful than all the other kings of India. He takes to himself 12,000 wives, of whom 4000 follow him on foot wherever he may go, and are employed solely in the service of the kitchen. A like number, more handsomely equipped, ride on horseback. The remainder are carried by men in litters, of whom 2000 or 3000 are selected as his wives on condition that at his death they should voluntarily burn themselves with him, which is considered to be a great honour for them....

Either he mistook the female bodyguards and maid-servants as wives or the Pope’s secretary decided to fudge the numbers for dramatic effect.

But he was probably right about the numbers if not the roles. As I was reading this book, I was amazed at the numbers. During the Roman wars, the armies of size 20-30 thousand soldiers were considered huge. In Vijayanagara, when the King went hunting, apparently his entourage was about 20,000 strong. Battles often involved 2-3 lakh soldiers. It is very difficult to believe these numbers. I have seen mentions of 900,000 infantry, 500 elephants and 200,000 horse men. It is really astonishing, how they maintained such armies. However, this is one point where all the various chroniclers are consistent, the armies then were huge. While reading the description of a common infantry soldier, it gives some insight. Apparently the infantry were practically naked (but for loincloth), wore no armour and fought with pikes or light swords. I think these were just militia drawn from lesser tributary kings, sustained on just food and water, they probably slept on hard ground in open air.

Coming back to the travelogue, we next drove to Krishna temple. (Krishna Temple | Hampi)















There is a long path in front of Krishna temple, there is even a pond, but I don’t recall the exact purpose of that place. But it is sophisticated and pretty.







Talking about wealth of Hampi, let me address that a little further. This is one more area where all the chroniclers agree, Hampi was stinking rich. Since the Portuguese writers were basically traders, they understood wealth when they saw it. One of them mentions that the jewelry found on a regular cavalry horse was more than the annual income of a Portuguese citizen. Diamonds and other precious gems were bought and sold in volume rather than weight. There is even a mention of an egg sized flawless diamond which later vanished into history. There were many diamond mines in Vijayanagara Empire that supplied this excess. The other sources of wealth were sandalwood and spices. The empire heavily traded these items with Portuguese for their horses and fine China silk.

Next we visited the Noblemen’s Quarters (Noblemen?s Quarters | Hampi). This is where the aristocrats lived.



On the other side of the road, we can find the Dannayaka's enclosure (Dannayaka's Enclosure | Hampi). This housed the royal mint and commander-in-chief’s office.



Check out the wall the surrounding Dannayak’s enclosure. I have shown the GV for comparison.



The city of Hampi is crisscrossed with canals and aqueducts, without it a city of this city couldn’t have been sustained. Many of these are still in use, some of them are servicing the sugarcane fields now.

Here is a stepped well fed from an aqueduct.



This is the Mahanavami Dibba (hill) from where the king and his family (not the 12,000 lot) watched the festivities and procession during the Mahanavami festival. (Mahanavami Dibba | Hampi)



Directly opposite this one can see the ruins of King’s palace, at least that’s what they think. It is completely razed to the ground. (Basement of Palaces | Hampi) Can you notice the GV?



After this we continued to Queen’s bath, or the swimming pool. Those stone supports you see under the windows are hallow, acting like showers.



Around this point we ran out of all the major attractions, and we hadn’t even covered 30% of Hampi. By now the Guide knew our interest, he knew we didn’t care about religious visits, he thought about few minutes and finally declared that we are mostly done. There were distant places, but he didn’t think it would be worth the ride. Generally it takes 4 days to cover everything, even 10 days if you are particular about the history, architecture and sculptures. But for a touring family with two kids including a one year old, this was as good as it gets. So we bade goodbye to him and left back for the hotel for lunch and much needed R&R.

There are lots of stories regarding Hampi, I have only tried to cover a few items of major interest, I hope I have kindled some interest among you all about Hampi’s rich (literally) history. If you are further interested, do check out Robert Sewell’s book which is available free online. The link is provided in post#9 by rkg. Thanks for all your patience in wading through this loooong travelogue.

[Nitin]

Amazing write-up & pictures,Sir!
There's so much to read & explore when it comes to our history.There's really never an end to the information we can gather from the scriptures & other important documents available these days.

[Buffetfan]

I have been to Hampi three times in the past seven years...I am just in love with the place. If you go there in cooler weather (sep to feb) you tend to appreciate the beauty so much more..it is like every stone is telling a story.
The fact that the entire layout is like the scenary drawings (river / plains / trees / hills ) that we used to make in the school days..also helps a lot
All in all..my favorite getaway..the mallige hotel is pretty nice too..though the quality is not the same as it used to be

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by G-BoleroBoy

I was actually surprised to see this amount of engineering gone in to make that huge Gopura display on wall in upside down. Pin-Hole camera concept

I wouldn't put that down as engineering, it is a neat trick though. Mayans back in the 8th century (I think) built a 60 miles long road that is so straight, it doesn't deviate even by a centimeter throughtout the length. You think our 21st century PWD can do that?

Originally Posted by Steeroid

The story of an extremely rich and super-prosperous empire basically in the middle of nowhere was quite fascinating - this wasnt a port, it had no hinterland, and it did not have a specific commodity or USP that made people flock there. Despite having nothing, it seems to have thrived for a while, creating huge buildings for history to remember it by.

The place was chosen because of 3 reasons, continous fresh water (Tungabhadra river), free and abundant building material and natural fortification by the rock formation. There is also some story about rabbit chasing the hunting dogs, that's probably legend.

Originally Posted by DKG

You have clearly put in a lot of effort to study Hampi's history and write your blog giving us some perspective. That truly is remarkable. Not many people would take the time to do what you just did. We owe you a big THANKS!!

Thanks DKG, by lunch time on the first day at Hampi, I knew I couldn't write the usual pictorial. I become quite distrubed in one sense. I knew I had to learn more and understand the place before attempting the travelogue.

[jp1]

Nice travelogue, Thanks Samurai for writing so beautifully, I am staying in Bangalore for such a long time, but had no idea about this place or its history. Wish to visit the place very soon. I am sure like me, many other Bhpians find it very informative.

[rjstyles69]

Samurai bravo !! I enjoyed reading every bit of the travelogue. I visited Hampi in '99 and the visit never seemed to bring in so much interest as compared reading to your travelogue over the last 2 days.

My reasons were

1 - Lack of interest in photography then.
2 - Was never interested in history too.

Well you have gotten me interested in history now.Thanks.

You have put in a lot of work with regards to learning the history of the place and then putting in pics to support the same . My compliments to you for that.
Once again a brilliant travelogue coupled with excellent photographs .