[MX6]

Did you climb up the Matanga Parvata? There are some amazing views from up there.

Again excellent photos of the aqueduct and the stepped tank.

Here's a brief on them.

The chain of aqueducts was used to bring water from the Kamalapura Tank and feed the tanks and wells in the enclosure.
One of the main branches of this aqueduct supplied water to the geometrically thrilling Stepped Tank within this area. In fact the very discovery of the Stepped Tank was due to this branch of aqueduct leading to particularly nowhere. The archeologists dug the ground at its end point and the tank emerged.
Radically different from the rest of tank constructions in Hampi, the Stepped Tank is made of made of finely finished black schist stone blocks. It seems the tank was made elsewhere and later brought and assembled at its current location. Practically every stone is earmarked for this purpose and some bears even 'sketches' by its architects. The purpose of this tank is not very sure, mostly it was used during the religious ceremonies by the royals.

[pjbiju]

Originally Posted by MX6

Did you climb up the Matanga Parvata? There are some amazing views from up there.

Again excellent photos of the aqueduct and the stepped tank.

Here's a brief on them.

The chain of aqueducts was used to bring water from the Kamalapura Tank and feed the tanks and wells in the enclosure.
One of the main branches of this aqueduct supplied water to the geometrically thrilling Stepped Tank within this area. In fact the very discovery of the Stepped Tank was due to this branch of aqueduct leading to particularly nowhere. The archeologists dug the ground at its end point and the tank emerged.
Radically different from the rest of tank constructions in Hampi, the Stepped Tank is made of made of finely finished black schist stone blocks. It seems the tank was made elsewhere and later brought and assembled at its current location. Practically every stone is earmarked for this purpose and some bears even 'sketches' by its architects. The purpose of this tank is not very sure, mostly it was used during the religious ceremonies by the royals.

Thanks for the explanation of the stepped tank. It looks very beautiful. We did not climb up the Matanga hill. Two days were completely insufficient for us.

================================================== ====

We returned to a few more places on day 2.

The grand entrance to Hampi (one of the many entry points to the ruins)


Some kind of shops near the Krishna Temple


The water tank. Even this had an aquaduct


Another picture of the tank with the structure in the middle


The door frame carved from a single stone


One of the Gopurams of the Krishna temple


A different angle


Another Gopuram


Description of the Kadlekalu Ganesha


The Bengal Gram Ganesha. It is huge.


A close-up


Our next stop was again a famous landmark of Hampi.

Can you make out what this is?


Now?


Now?


Now you can. Notice the size of the stones in relation to people.


Yes, the sister stones.


-Biju

To be contd.

[hemanth.anand]

Originally Posted by MX6

Did you climb up the Matanga Parvata? There are some amazing views from up there.

Again excellent photos of the aqueduct and the stepped tank.

Here's a brief on them.

The chain of aqueducts was used to bring water from the Kamalapura Tank and feed the tanks and wells in the enclosure.
One of the main branches of this aqueduct supplied water to the geometrically thrilling Stepped Tank within this area. In fact the very discovery of the Stepped Tank was due to this branch of aqueduct leading to particularly nowhere. The archeologists dug the ground at its end point and the tank emerged.
Radically different from the rest of tank constructions in Hampi, the Stepped Tank is made of made of finely finished black schist stone blocks. It seems the tank was made elsewhere and later brought and assembled at its current location. Practically every stone is earmarked for this purpose and some bears even 'sketches' by its architects. The purpose of this tank is not very sure, mostly it was used during the religious ceremonies by the royals.

As far as I have heard is that these aquaducts brought water to the stepped tank from the Kamalapura tank.
this was used for soldiers or during functions as a source of drinking water.

if you observe the area around this place, you'll find that there are lot of small depressions carved on stones. they were used as plates for the soldiers is one of the derivations.
Also if you observe its very near to the mahanavami dibba translated as "mahanavami/dasara hillock" where dasara celebrations were staged. for these festivities they were used as big dinner halls is another derivation.

Drinking water for these functions must hav been sourced from this stepped tank.

[rjstyles69]

biju me just back after a brief hiatus(thanks to the Christmas vacations) and have been hooked to this thread of yours. Brilliant man, the 1st page has some awesome silhouettes and definitely eye candy stuff.

Off-late you seemed to have turned into a history buff, 1st it was Purandar Fort then the Tikona Fort and here you are now at Hampi and Badami exploring places. Good going pal , just put in a 5 stars for your thread. Definitely worth it and keep up with the good camera work.

[pjbiju]

Originally Posted by rjstyles69

biju me just back after a brief hiatus(thanks to the Christmas vacations) and have been hooked to this thread of yours. Brilliant man, the 1st page has some awesome silhouettes and definitely eye candy stuff.

Off-late you seemed to have turned into a history buff, 1st it was Purandar Fort then the Tikona Fort and here you are now at Hampi and Badami exploring places. Good going pal , just put in a 5 stars for your thread. Definitely worth it and keep up with the good camera work.

Thank you Riju for the rating and for the words of appreciation. You should go to Hampi. It is a photographer's delight. I remember your comments on Samurai's thread that when you visited Hampi you were not into photography. So now is the time to work the magic of your compositions on those ancient ruins.

I was not so good with history in school. But now that I do not have to pass history exams, it is quite interesting and worthy of study. I have bought a book on Hampi by John Fritz. Yet to finish reading that. Besides during Christmas vacation, Hampi was within our budget.

==========================================

We then went to visit the Underground Shiva Temple. It was here that I met Team-Bhpian Hemanth.Anand.

The Description


The temple complex


The entrance


The statue inside


There are a lot of figures carved into the walls.

The Elephant and Bull carving


The bull


The elephant


Other figures - MX6 can perhaps name these
Figure 1


Figure 2


Figure 3


Figure 4


Figure 5


A peacock


From the Mahanavami Dibba


-Biju

To be contd.

[pjbiju]

The photographs of the figures carved onto the walls are from different places in Hampi and not from the Underground Siva temple.

After this we saw a couple of more places before heading back to Hospet. Unfortunately we could not visit the museum or the Kannada University.

On the first day we went to the KSTDC hotel at Kamalapur for lunch, but we were late and most of the dishes from the buffet were missing. They said we have to wait. So we came to Kamalapur bus stand and had some food from a small place there. On the second day we had the buffet lunch at the KSTDC hotel. Again we were late, but they let us have the lunch over there.

We stopped briefly at the Kamalapur lake


The Swift at the lake


-Biju

To be contd.

[StarVegabond]

Hi Biju

Your pictures remind me of our trip to Hampi last year. We had been to Gadag to attend a wedding in the family. That is how i remember the only SUN Flower farm in that area. We were joined by my parents on our trip to Hampi and return to Bangalore. I just now had a re-look at the pictures too.

I too had bought the book on Hampi by John Fritz and George Michell. Just now i removed the book from the shelf and removed the dust on the cover. Would carry this book for reading during my forthcoming business trip.

Your efforts deserve nothing less than 5 Stars.

[pjbiju]

Originally Posted by StarVegabond

Hi Biju

Your pictures remind me of our trip to Hampi last year. We had been to Gadag to attend a wedding in the family. That is how i remember the only SUN Flower farm in that area. We were joined by my parents on our trip to Hampi and return to Bangalore. I just now had a re-look at the pictures too.

I too had bought the book on Hampi by John Fritz and George Michell. Just now i removed the book from the shelf and removed the dust on the cover. Would carry this book for reading during my forthcoming business trip.

Your efforts deserve nothing less than 5 Stars.

We saw a couple of sunflower farms on the way. This one looked quite nice and I was in a mood to stop.

I am reading the book on my way to the office in the mornings by the company bus. I have kept aside the book on Dracula half finished to finish this book and a small guide I bought on Badami.

Thank you for your kind words and ratings. I hope these pictures and other travelogues will inspire more people to visit these places and also preserve our history. More visitors would help the Tourism/ASI dept. to spend more money to help protect our heritage and help people have a pleasant experience of visiting these places. With proper vision, tourism can do so much to improve local economies. I do not see that happening. But I hope that will improve.

================================================== ===============================================

We were done with our stay at Hospet. We could not go back to TB Dam to watch the sunset. We did not get time to do a lot of things that we wanted to do. The list of things we missed

• Visit to the Vaikunta Guest House at TB Dam to watch the sunset
• Visit to the Japanese garden at the TB Dam (opposite side of Vaikunta)
• Visit to Gunda Forest Guest House. This gives access to the reservoir and should be a great place to watch the sunset over the reservoir. We could even swim in the waters. I am not sure if they allow swimming now.
• Visit to Daroji Sloth Bear Sanctuary
• Visit to Kamlapur Museum
• Visit to Kannada Universtiy at Hampi
• Visit to Matanga Hill
• Coracle ride
• Visiting other ruins at Hampi

May be another trip is due.

I tried to search for my friends. I knew where one of them lived. So I tried to find the lane and the house. But I did not succeed in that. Too many lanes and it was already quite late in the night. I then went to a shop owned by the family of a friend. The shop was closed on account of Christmas. But the neigbhouring shop owner managed to get me the number of my friend's brother. So that has opened a door to find my other friends at Hospet.

It was time to move on to our next destination. I checked with the hotel staff on the route to Badami.

Sir there is only one route. Take NH13.

I talked to a couple of tourist taxi drivers.

Do not take NH13. Take any other route.

So we decided to go beyond Koppal on NH63 and then take a right to go to Badami. We had seen a board over there pointing towards Badami. And that is what we did.

We took the Hospet-Koppal-Kuknoor-Yelaburga-Sudi-Badami road. They were mostly through villages with slightly patchy roads. There was hardly any traffic. There were farms all along and the drive was very scenic. Unfortunately I did not stop anywhere to take pictures of those beautiful farms and countryside. I will give the distance statistics at the end of the travelogue.

Well, we did stop at another sunflower farm for photographs.


We passed this statue at Yelaburga (I hope I have got the place correct or was it at Kuknoor?). Any idea whose statue this is?


The swift admiring the sunflowers or is it the other way around?


Our destination for the evening


-Biju

To be contd.

[pjbiju]

We reached Badami by 3:00 p.m. and checked into the KSTDC hotel. You will have no problem carrying your luggage. There are a lot monkeys around who are ever willing to take things from your hands. They will follow you till your rooms. One of them even came and "kind of knocked on our doors" after we had closed them. I immediately opened the doors thinking that my friend had come to ask me something. The monkey coolly took a couple of steps back and watched my reaction. The kids were simply too frightened to go out alone.

A brief digression.

Remember not to feed the monkeys. I learned it the hard way and I am sure it is people like me that have spoiled these monkeys. This happened on the day we were driving back to Pune. I got up early. And then carried the bags to my car. My son accompanied me. He got into the car. And as usual there was a crowd of monkeys around the car. They were carefully scrutinizing whatever I was putting into the car. At some point, I felt pity for them. I asked my son to give me a banana (from the dozen that we had purchased the previous day). He took out two bananas and gave me one. I promptly tossed it to the nearest monkey. He grabbed it and then started to growl (is that the right word?) looking at the other banana my son was holding. I quickly asked him to throw the second banana as well to the monkeys. This seemed to satisfy them and they briefly withdrew to finish the bananas.

Meanwhile my wife came and she too sat in the car. My son opened the power windows slightly. I had started to walk to the restaurant to handover the room keys. Suddenly my wife and son started shrieking. I turned back to see one monkey sitting on the roof of the car, another on the bonnet and two on the partially opened windows. They knew we had bananas in the car. Luckily the key of the car was on ignition and my wife managed to close the windows and the monkeys jumped off. If not, I am sure they would have simply jumped into the car.

Another incident while at the Badami caves.

We carried no eatables. But my wife was carrying a 2-litre water bottle that was by then almost half empty. Again there were many monkeys around the caves. If they see any eatables in your hand, they would try to snatch it from you. This time, a monkey made a straight dash for the water bottle. My wife shrieked and threw the bottle down. The monkey picked it up and carried it up the rocks. It even managed to open the bottle. However it did not know how to drink from the bottle. It tried to pour the water onto the rock face and drink from there. That way the monkey poured all the water down, but was not able to take even a single sip since the water simply flowed down. So beware of the monkeys. And I think we should not feed them.

Now back to the story.

Though past their lunch time, KSTDC staff provided us with rice plates. Once the lunch was over, we headed to Badami caves. The roads are very narrow going to the parking lot. We walked around the caves.

The first sight of the caves


The Nataraja with 18 hands


The kind of rocks that Badami caves are cut out from and the structures on the opposite side


A carving on the roof


The pillars


Another pillar


Sculpture. I did not use flash for any of the photos. Hence I had to do with some dark areas in some of the photos.


A roof beam sculpture


The hall


Another sculpture. At the bottom you can see the elephant and bull carving like in Hampi. They are two-in-one carvings.


Another cave


The Agusthya Theertha lake


Relief carving 1


Relief Carving 2


Relief Carving 3


-Biju

To be contd.

[Ragul]

Lovely places lovely snaps, lovely narrative!

A highly recommended book reading on Hampi is the one by B Suryanarain Rao - "History Of Vijayanagar - The Never To Be Forgotten Empire" possibly the only reliable version written not biased by a foreign colonizers hidden agenda(s).

HTH

[pjbiju]

Originally Posted by Ragul

Lovely places lovely snaps, lovely narrative!

A highly recommended book reading on Hampi is the one by B Suryanarain Rao - "History Of Vijayanagar - The Never To Be Forgotten Empire" possibly the only reliable version written not biased by a foreign colonizers hidden agenda(s).

HTH

Thanks Ragul. I will try to get hold of this book. It would be interesting to read the Indian version of this.

================================================== ======

We went around the different caves. The light was fast fading and they close the place by 6:00 p.m. There were again a lot of school children visiting the caves.

I took whatever pictures I could in the fading light. There were quite a few figures carved onto the walls. Someone may be able to name all of them.

I am finding it difficult to upload the pictures. Will try that again.

Sculpture 1


Sculpture 2


Sculpture 3


Sculpture 4


Sculpture 5


On the ceiling


Pillar type 1


Pillar type 2


Beautiful rocks


The structure on the other side of the lake


The bhuthnath temple


We wanted to return to the caves and also go to the bhuthnath temple and museum. The next day we were back. But it was impossible to take the cars though the narrow lanes to the lake. So we went back to the hotel and hired a rickshaw. But it was too late by then and everything was closed and it was dark. We took a couple of more pictures before it became completely dark.

The lake


lake and steps


The bhutnath temple after sunset


Finally after several attempts, managed to load the pictures.

-Biju

To be contd.

[laluks]

Amazing!
Loved all the snaps.

[pjbiju]

We came back to KSTDC Mayura Chalukya hotel. We had our dinner over there. They have a very limited menu. And the food quality is OK. Anyway I do not think there is much of a choice. Hot water was available in the morning at around 7:30 a.m. onwards. That was too late. But again, you have to live with it. The rooms at KSTDC are huge.

Next day we decided to drive to Aihole first and then start from there. However we first stopped at Pattadakal. The roads going towards these places are narrow at some points. At these places, two vehicles cannot pass each other. There is one such section just before Aihole too, passing through a small village.

Pattadakal is again amazing. For those interested in more history, a good place to start is lukeskywalker's thread - http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travel...itage-run.html

Some pictures of the temples and relief carvings























































-Biju

To be contd.

[pjbiju]

Originally Posted by laluks

Amazing!
Loved all the snaps.

Thanks Lalu. The places are so amazing that the pictures can be anything but good.

================================================== =

We did not hire a guide at Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal. May be we should have. But here we did not have any extra day and our intention was to spend a lot of time in taking photographs. That would have suffered a little if a guide was with us. Again unlike Hampi, these places are not spread over large areas.

More pictures of Pattadakal.






















































-Biju

To be contd.

[Ragul]

One of the finest bull carvings I have seen!! Words are not enough to describe the impact and impression of all the pictures you have posted!!