Yet another Travelogue on Hampi This is my first travelogue here so please bear with me if it's not up-to the mark. While i always wanted to visit this place i did not make a serious an attempt until this past week where i came across another thread by @amohit who had posted his experience on the visit with some beautiful pictures. I had got inspired and decide to get going. For some reason i had no interest to drive so decided to take the bus. I checked the KSRTC website and saw there are quiet a few buses plying to Hospet (nearest town to the Hampi village) everyday and one even goes directly to Hampi. I booked in this bus for the onward journey for the wife and i keeping the return journey open - I had maximum of four days to spend.
On Wednesday night we reached the KSRTC bus stand in Majectic and the place was awfully crowded, after 10 mins of searching we finally located and boarded the bus. I was expecting it to be an AC Volvo but to my disappointment it was not and i didn't had an option. The bus started about 30 mins after the scheduled start time and reached Hampi at 9 the morning - 2 hrs late. The journey was not terribly bad so we didn't really mind the delay. Like my most trips i didn't make any bookings for the accommodation and i was bit nervous but luckily i met a guy on the bus who frequents the place and he helped find an accommodation in the village. It was a home stay and the rate was pretty cheap and so was the place. We didn't come here looking for Luxury and so we took it. We got ready and stopped for a quick breakfast we started our visits around the 'Sacred Center', starting with main Temple Virupaksha. After few hours of walk we were really tired and the heat was taking toll on us. We headed to 'Mango tree', popular joint around this place and this is right next to the TB river on the banks, the place is setup rather nicely. We spent couple of hours here and visited few other places, we then went back to our room by 6, not knowing what to do we slept off. There's absolutely nothing to do in the evening except to visit restaurants and eat which is what we did. This time we ate in place called 'New Shanthi restaurant' - interestingly all of these places, however small, serve everything from Italian to Mexican to Israeli cuisine and they do reasonably good job.
The next day we started early, hired a vehicle and started our visit around the 'Royal center'. By evening we had seen most of the places and as decided in the morning we cut short our trip postponing Badami, Ailhole, Pattadakal for the next time and left for Bangalore. We really enjoyed our short 2 day trip and here are some memories that we carried from the visit. The main temple Virupaksha
The temple elephant - he was smart and sure was a crowd puller View of the Vishnu temple The stone car in the Vittala Temple Queens's Bath - the royal bathroom it is Lotus Mahal Queen's palace basement and it's surrounding Some random Pictures
These guys are present all over the ruins
Around Hampi Bazaar
View from The Mango Tree restaurant |