I finally left Hampi on the 12th, but not before an early morning walk. I walked past the huge Nandi statue and over the rocky ridge to the Achyutharaya Temple, and then along the bazaar leading towards the river and finally past the various temples and other ruins as far as the Vitthala Temple. It was quiet and cool in the early morning. Hardly anyone else was out and about. I came back more or less the same way to my hotel and had breakfast before catching the bus to Hospet, less than ten miles away, about 10:30. From Hospet I caught an 11:30 bus south to Chitradurga, about 80 miles away. We passed through hilly terrain, with not many crops, though there was some corn, cotton and rice. We rose to about 2500 feet in elevation and reached Chitradurga about 3. I found a good hotel right across from the bus station and took an autorickshaw to the city's fort on the southern edge of town set amidst rocky hills. The hills south of Chitradurga rise to almost 4000 feet in elevation.
This fort, in quite a magnificent setting, was the abode of the Nayaks, feudal lords under the Vijayanagar Empire and then rulers in their own right after the fall of the empire in 1565. It was captured by Haider Ali, the Sultan of Mysore, in 1779. The fort is set among several rocky hills, covered with those huge Hampi-esque boulders. The builders cleverly used both boulders and walls for defenses. The fort originally had three walls on the plains and four more up into the hills, and I counted at least five sets of walls as I walked up. Perhaps some of the walls on the flatlands below have disappeared. The gates often had several turns of ninety degree angles to slow attackers and there were lots of narrow slits for defenders to shoot down through. It is a very impressive fort and very scenic with its walls and boulders. It also contains fourteen temples and an impressive system of tanks of water linked to each other, with enough water in them to withstand, it is said, a twelve year siege. The British took it over in 1799 after they had defeated Tipu Sultan, Haider Ali's son and successor, in a battle further south and are quoted as saying they were glad they didn't have to attack this fort, as it seemed impregnable.
That Saturday afternoon it was full of tourists, all Indians but me. I walked all over, but couldn't cover it all before dark. There are the ruins of a mud walled palace in the best fortified position, past all the walls and surrounded by three rocky hills with stone bastions atop them. I climbed to another bastion, lower than those three. I left at 6:30 as it became dark and walked along the long eastern wall on the flatlands from the lowest gate before catching an autorickshaw back to my hotel.
I had a very comfortable bed that night, a change from the hard mattress I had in Hampi, so I slept later than expected the next morning. I didn't get back to the fort the next morning until almost 8. The morning was cool and sunny and there were already buses of tourists outside the fort's main gate. I walked up into the fort, heading west through gate after gate until I got into the center of the fort. I walked to the northwest corner of the fort and climbed as high as I could go, up stepped ramparts and past boulders. I came back to the center and then made a long climb to the highest point, the southwest corner, about 800 feet above the town. For most of the way I couldn't see the way to the bastion I was heading for, but I made my way up rocky slopes and through passages between huge boulders and reached broken steps up the old walls. At one point I followed about 50 steps hewn into the face of a steep rock incline. The views from the top were great and it was cool in the wind, even though it was past 11 when I got to the top. I tried to find an alternate route down, to the palace area I hoped, without success. I came down more or less the way I had come up, with a stop in the shade of a big boulder to drink the last of my water and eat some cookies I had brought with me.
I made my way to the palace area sometime after noon, and it was hot in the sun. I explored and sat here and there where I found shade. Many of the palace buildings were made of mud, with a stone base, a cheaper construction than using stone, but, of course, not as long lasting. Still, some of the mud walls, and even some of the plaster on them, remain. Hot, hungry, thirsty and tired, I made it back to a snack stand inside the fort about 1:30 and sat under a tree, as I tried to decide whether I should leave the fort and try to find a restaurant or just buy some snacks. I must have looked hungry, as a guy came over and asked if I would like something to eat. He and his family had brought food with them. He is from a nearby town, but is now working as an electrical engineer in Bangalore, and was accompanied by his wife, his brother-in-law, his father, and one other young woman. They gave me a delicious lunch, with a vegetable dish, a coconut dish, chappatis, rice, and the best of all, curd rice with grapes, with a piece of coconut barfi for dessert. They were very friendly and I enjoyed talking to them and, of course, eating their food. I also drank over a litter of water, and some orange soda they gave me. Afterwards, they headed out of the fort and I was sleepy and could have used a nap. I walked around a bit, visiting a few of the temples in the fort, and sat here and there.
I walked down towards the entry gate about 5:30, and then walked up a slight rise to the northeast bastion, said to have been a jail, and enjoyed the views back towards the hills and walls to the south and west. I left the fort again as it got dark, about 6:30.
The next day was a long day of bus riding. It took me more than eight and a half hours to travel less than 200 miles, on three different buses. I left Chitradurga just before 9 on a bus heading to Hubli, 125 miles to the northwest. The bus wasn't crowded, but it was slow, though we often traveled on a four lane divided highway, the main national highway between Mumbai and Bangalore. We traveled at first through flat and then through rolling landscape, generally around 2000 feet in elevation, with lots of agriculture: corn, cotton, sunflowers, rice and much else. Arriving in Hubli after about five and a half hours, I immediately caught a bus heading northeast through what seemed rich agricultural land, passing under an elevated canal at one point. My seatmate was a friendly IT guy from Bangalore heading back to his native town for a week. After about 50 miles, and two hours, I got off at the small town of Kulgeri and again immediately left on a smaller, cramped bus heading east to Badami, less than 15 miles away. Reaching the small town, with about 25,000 people, the bus was engulfed in a huge traffic jam. It was a holiday (Markara Sankranti, the first day of spring, when the sun enters Capricorn, so I've read, and the beginning of an auspicious month after a not so auspicious one) and the traffic was in large part Indian day trippers. I was glad I hadn't arrived a day earlier. I got a decent hotel across from the bus station and had a delicious north Indian thali for dinner at a nearby restaurant.
Badami is situated just west of red sandstone cliffs and the next morning I walked through the whitewashed old town to the temples under the south fort situated on the cliffs to the southeast of the town. These temples, cut into the cliff, date from the 6th century, when Badami was the capital of the Chalukya Empire, which dominated this part of India from 543 to 757. The Chalukyans controlled much of the Deccan, from the Narmada River in the north to near Kanchipuram in the south, where they faced off against the Pallava Empire. There are four cave temples, somewhat similar to those at Ellora, cut into the cliffs below the fort. The fort itself is off limits, though I don't know why. It isn't used by the military. There is a locked gate in a cleft in the cliffs between two of the cave temples that leads up to it. The temples are full of beautiful sculpture and even some remnants of painting. Two are dedicated to Vishnu, one to Shiva, and the highest and last built is a Jain temple. They look down on a greenish artificial lake also dating from the Chalukyan era and towards the red cliffs to the north, with the north fort on top and free-standing temples (that is, not cave temples) on them. The cave temples were very interesting and the views were great, but the temples were full of noisy Indians. Indian children and young men seem to like nothing better than to screech and scream when they get into caves, or on trains when they pass through tunnels, or any place where they can hear the echo of their screams. They are a people enamored of noise. Even at Hindu temples, it often is not music that you hear, but just noise: bells clanging, drums being pounded, perhaps some horns being blown.
I spent the morning looking through the cave temples and enjoying the views before coming down about noon and walking along the lake to the north side, passing a temple and washerwomen on the way. There is a little museum on the north side, and I sat for a while and ate some snacks and read a newspaper until about 2:30. Then, after looking through the museum, I climbed up stairs and paths into the north cliffs, visiting the temples and reaching the fort on the top. There is not much to the fort on the top, but the climb up, through rocky gorges and past walls and gates was very interesting. The views were great, too. I walked down and then walked to the temple at the east end of the lake. On the ghats lining the lake women and girls were washing clothes and metal pots. Finally, I walked to a very nice late 7th century temple on a little hill just west of the north cliffs. It has some interesting sculpture and I sat up there with a bunch of monkeys, both macaques and langurs, in the late afternoon, just before sunset, enjoying the views of the town below and the red cliffs, with their forts and temples, above the town.
The next morning I slept in a little later than planned and didn't catch a bus to the little village of Pattadakal, on the Malaprabha River about 13 miles northeast, until 9:30. The bus drove on a narrow strip of asphalt, often potholed, passing corn, sunflowers and other crops. Pattadakal is where the Chalukyan kings were crowned and is full of 8th century temples. They seem to all be Shiva temples, with linga and nandis. There are two distinct styles, north Indian and south Indian. The former have curved towers while the latter have more stepped roofs, among other differences. The earlier ones are smaller and less adorned, although an early southern style temple is quite beautifully proportioned. However, there are two later southern style temples, dating from the 740's, that are quite elaborate. They are both much larger than the others, the larger of the two measuring something like 200 feet by 125 feet. They were built to commemorate the defeat of the Pallavas at Kanchipuram, and apparently one of the spoils of the victory was a Pallava architect who designed the temples. They are adorned with beautiful sculpture, both inside and out, including an eight foot high black stone Nandi in front of the larger temple, quite a contrast to the reddish sandstone of the temples.
The area wasn't crowded when I first arrived, a nice contrast with the cave temples at Badami, but later lots of noisy groups of kids showed up. I wandered all around and enjoyed the site. Late in the afternoon I walked a little south to a later temple, maybe 9th century, in a mixture of styles. I caught the bus back to Badami about 4:30, and at one stop it filled with little kids wearing white shirts and either red shorts or red skirts and took them from their school to their village maybe a couple of miles away. I had great views of Badami's red cliffs and forts and temples upon arrival back in Badami about 5:30.
The next morning I caught a 7:30 bus heading to Aihole, 20 miles or so to the northeast. We passed through Pattadakal on that narrow, bumpy road. We also passed several beautiful fields of sunflowers. It took a little over an hour to reach the little village of Aihole, where something like 125 temples are scattered throughout the village and surrounding countryside. These date from the 6th through the 12th centuries and are said to include some of the earliest examples of free-standing temples (as opposed to cave temples) in India, constructed by the Chalukyans and their successors the Rashtrakutans. Along with northern and southern styles, there are styles that didn't catch on. One of the earliest has a semi-circular apse, derived from Buddhist cave temples. It has some very good sculpture on its walls and pillars. This and several other early and rather squat and simple temples are in a sort of park, but many temples are right in the village among the simple whitewashed houses. Several others are on the outskirts of town, one a cave temple with very good sculpture inside. Most of the temples have linga, so are dedicated to Shiva, but they must have been Vishnu temples initially, as many have a garuda, Vishnu's vehicle, holding the tails of snakes over the doorways into the inner sanctum. Also, there is a simple Buddhist temple on a hillside and a Jain temple atop the hill, with great views of the village full of temples below.
I enjoyed walking through the village, with not only temples to see, but also bullocks and bullock carts and villagers doing their daily tasks. The adults were quite friendly, though the kids were annoying, persistently begging for money or pens or chocolate. I watched a man winnowing some sort of hard, brownish orange grain from chaff by pouring basketfulls of the grain and chaff from atop a cart. The wind quite effectively separated the grain from the chaff. Prior to the winnowing by the man on the cart, the basketfulls of grain and chaff had been gathered up by women from the asphalt road through town, traffic having knocked the grain loose from its casings. I watched another man drive a bullock cart load of the grain and chaff and dump it on the road to be run over by vehicles. The people doing this work seemed amused to have me watching and photographing. One gave me a handfull of the grain and motioned that it was for eating. I popped one kernel into my mouth and it was far too hard to chew. I visited a few more temples in and around the village, and a couple of what looked like recently excavated step wells, before catching a bus back to Badami about 4.
This fort, in quite a magnificent setting, was the abode of the Nayaks, feudal lords under the Vijayanagar Empire and then rulers in their own right after the fall of the empire in 1565. It was captured by Haider Ali, the Sultan of Mysore, in 1779. The fort is set among several rocky hills, covered with those huge Hampi-esque boulders. The builders cleverly used both boulders and walls for defenses. The fort originally had three walls on the plains and four more up into the hills, and I counted at least five sets of walls as I walked up. Perhaps some of the walls on the flatlands below have disappeared. The gates often had several turns of ninety degree angles to slow attackers and there were lots of narrow slits for defenders to shoot down through. It is a very impressive fort and very scenic with its walls and boulders. It also contains fourteen temples and an impressive system of tanks of water linked to each other, with enough water in them to withstand, it is said, a twelve year siege. The British took it over in 1799 after they had defeated Tipu Sultan, Haider Ali's son and successor, in a battle further south and are quoted as saying they were glad they didn't have to attack this fort, as it seemed impregnable.
That Saturday afternoon it was full of tourists, all Indians but me. I walked all over, but couldn't cover it all before dark. There are the ruins of a mud walled palace in the best fortified position, past all the walls and surrounded by three rocky hills with stone bastions atop them. I climbed to another bastion, lower than those three. I left at 6:30 as it became dark and walked along the long eastern wall on the flatlands from the lowest gate before catching an autorickshaw back to my hotel.
I had a very comfortable bed that night, a change from the hard mattress I had in Hampi, so I slept later than expected the next morning. I didn't get back to the fort the next morning until almost 8. The morning was cool and sunny and there were already buses of tourists outside the fort's main gate. I walked up into the fort, heading west through gate after gate until I got into the center of the fort. I walked to the northwest corner of the fort and climbed as high as I could go, up stepped ramparts and past boulders. I came back to the center and then made a long climb to the highest point, the southwest corner, about 800 feet above the town. For most of the way I couldn't see the way to the bastion I was heading for, but I made my way up rocky slopes and through passages between huge boulders and reached broken steps up the old walls. At one point I followed about 50 steps hewn into the face of a steep rock incline. The views from the top were great and it was cool in the wind, even though it was past 11 when I got to the top. I tried to find an alternate route down, to the palace area I hoped, without success. I came down more or less the way I had come up, with a stop in the shade of a big boulder to drink the last of my water and eat some cookies I had brought with me.
I made my way to the palace area sometime after noon, and it was hot in the sun. I explored and sat here and there where I found shade. Many of the palace buildings were made of mud, with a stone base, a cheaper construction than using stone, but, of course, not as long lasting. Still, some of the mud walls, and even some of the plaster on them, remain. Hot, hungry, thirsty and tired, I made it back to a snack stand inside the fort about 1:30 and sat under a tree, as I tried to decide whether I should leave the fort and try to find a restaurant or just buy some snacks. I must have looked hungry, as a guy came over and asked if I would like something to eat. He and his family had brought food with them. He is from a nearby town, but is now working as an electrical engineer in Bangalore, and was accompanied by his wife, his brother-in-law, his father, and one other young woman. They gave me a delicious lunch, with a vegetable dish, a coconut dish, chappatis, rice, and the best of all, curd rice with grapes, with a piece of coconut barfi for dessert. They were very friendly and I enjoyed talking to them and, of course, eating their food. I also drank over a litter of water, and some orange soda they gave me. Afterwards, they headed out of the fort and I was sleepy and could have used a nap. I walked around a bit, visiting a few of the temples in the fort, and sat here and there.
I walked down towards the entry gate about 5:30, and then walked up a slight rise to the northeast bastion, said to have been a jail, and enjoyed the views back towards the hills and walls to the south and west. I left the fort again as it got dark, about 6:30.
The next day was a long day of bus riding. It took me more than eight and a half hours to travel less than 200 miles, on three different buses. I left Chitradurga just before 9 on a bus heading to Hubli, 125 miles to the northwest. The bus wasn't crowded, but it was slow, though we often traveled on a four lane divided highway, the main national highway between Mumbai and Bangalore. We traveled at first through flat and then through rolling landscape, generally around 2000 feet in elevation, with lots of agriculture: corn, cotton, sunflowers, rice and much else. Arriving in Hubli after about five and a half hours, I immediately caught a bus heading northeast through what seemed rich agricultural land, passing under an elevated canal at one point. My seatmate was a friendly IT guy from Bangalore heading back to his native town for a week. After about 50 miles, and two hours, I got off at the small town of Kulgeri and again immediately left on a smaller, cramped bus heading east to Badami, less than 15 miles away. Reaching the small town, with about 25,000 people, the bus was engulfed in a huge traffic jam. It was a holiday (Markara Sankranti, the first day of spring, when the sun enters Capricorn, so I've read, and the beginning of an auspicious month after a not so auspicious one) and the traffic was in large part Indian day trippers. I was glad I hadn't arrived a day earlier. I got a decent hotel across from the bus station and had a delicious north Indian thali for dinner at a nearby restaurant.
Badami is situated just west of red sandstone cliffs and the next morning I walked through the whitewashed old town to the temples under the south fort situated on the cliffs to the southeast of the town. These temples, cut into the cliff, date from the 6th century, when Badami was the capital of the Chalukya Empire, which dominated this part of India from 543 to 757. The Chalukyans controlled much of the Deccan, from the Narmada River in the north to near Kanchipuram in the south, where they faced off against the Pallava Empire. There are four cave temples, somewhat similar to those at Ellora, cut into the cliffs below the fort. The fort itself is off limits, though I don't know why. It isn't used by the military. There is a locked gate in a cleft in the cliffs between two of the cave temples that leads up to it. The temples are full of beautiful sculpture and even some remnants of painting. Two are dedicated to Vishnu, one to Shiva, and the highest and last built is a Jain temple. They look down on a greenish artificial lake also dating from the Chalukyan era and towards the red cliffs to the north, with the north fort on top and free-standing temples (that is, not cave temples) on them. The cave temples were very interesting and the views were great, but the temples were full of noisy Indians. Indian children and young men seem to like nothing better than to screech and scream when they get into caves, or on trains when they pass through tunnels, or any place where they can hear the echo of their screams. They are a people enamored of noise. Even at Hindu temples, it often is not music that you hear, but just noise: bells clanging, drums being pounded, perhaps some horns being blown.
I spent the morning looking through the cave temples and enjoying the views before coming down about noon and walking along the lake to the north side, passing a temple and washerwomen on the way. There is a little museum on the north side, and I sat for a while and ate some snacks and read a newspaper until about 2:30. Then, after looking through the museum, I climbed up stairs and paths into the north cliffs, visiting the temples and reaching the fort on the top. There is not much to the fort on the top, but the climb up, through rocky gorges and past walls and gates was very interesting. The views were great, too. I walked down and then walked to the temple at the east end of the lake. On the ghats lining the lake women and girls were washing clothes and metal pots. Finally, I walked to a very nice late 7th century temple on a little hill just west of the north cliffs. It has some interesting sculpture and I sat up there with a bunch of monkeys, both macaques and langurs, in the late afternoon, just before sunset, enjoying the views of the town below and the red cliffs, with their forts and temples, above the town.
The next morning I slept in a little later than planned and didn't catch a bus to the little village of Pattadakal, on the Malaprabha River about 13 miles northeast, until 9:30. The bus drove on a narrow strip of asphalt, often potholed, passing corn, sunflowers and other crops. Pattadakal is where the Chalukyan kings were crowned and is full of 8th century temples. They seem to all be Shiva temples, with linga and nandis. There are two distinct styles, north Indian and south Indian. The former have curved towers while the latter have more stepped roofs, among other differences. The earlier ones are smaller and less adorned, although an early southern style temple is quite beautifully proportioned. However, there are two later southern style temples, dating from the 740's, that are quite elaborate. They are both much larger than the others, the larger of the two measuring something like 200 feet by 125 feet. They were built to commemorate the defeat of the Pallavas at Kanchipuram, and apparently one of the spoils of the victory was a Pallava architect who designed the temples. They are adorned with beautiful sculpture, both inside and out, including an eight foot high black stone Nandi in front of the larger temple, quite a contrast to the reddish sandstone of the temples.
The area wasn't crowded when I first arrived, a nice contrast with the cave temples at Badami, but later lots of noisy groups of kids showed up. I wandered all around and enjoyed the site. Late in the afternoon I walked a little south to a later temple, maybe 9th century, in a mixture of styles. I caught the bus back to Badami about 4:30, and at one stop it filled with little kids wearing white shirts and either red shorts or red skirts and took them from their school to their village maybe a couple of miles away. I had great views of Badami's red cliffs and forts and temples upon arrival back in Badami about 5:30.
The next morning I caught a 7:30 bus heading to Aihole, 20 miles or so to the northeast. We passed through Pattadakal on that narrow, bumpy road. We also passed several beautiful fields of sunflowers. It took a little over an hour to reach the little village of Aihole, where something like 125 temples are scattered throughout the village and surrounding countryside. These date from the 6th through the 12th centuries and are said to include some of the earliest examples of free-standing temples (as opposed to cave temples) in India, constructed by the Chalukyans and their successors the Rashtrakutans. Along with northern and southern styles, there are styles that didn't catch on. One of the earliest has a semi-circular apse, derived from Buddhist cave temples. It has some very good sculpture on its walls and pillars. This and several other early and rather squat and simple temples are in a sort of park, but many temples are right in the village among the simple whitewashed houses. Several others are on the outskirts of town, one a cave temple with very good sculpture inside. Most of the temples have linga, so are dedicated to Shiva, but they must have been Vishnu temples initially, as many have a garuda, Vishnu's vehicle, holding the tails of snakes over the doorways into the inner sanctum. Also, there is a simple Buddhist temple on a hillside and a Jain temple atop the hill, with great views of the village full of temples below.
I enjoyed walking through the village, with not only temples to see, but also bullocks and bullock carts and villagers doing their daily tasks. The adults were quite friendly, though the kids were annoying, persistently begging for money or pens or chocolate. I watched a man winnowing some sort of hard, brownish orange grain from chaff by pouring basketfulls of the grain and chaff from atop a cart. The wind quite effectively separated the grain from the chaff. Prior to the winnowing by the man on the cart, the basketfulls of grain and chaff had been gathered up by women from the asphalt road through town, traffic having knocked the grain loose from its casings. I watched another man drive a bullock cart load of the grain and chaff and dump it on the road to be run over by vehicles. The people doing this work seemed amused to have me watching and photographing. One gave me a handfull of the grain and motioned that it was for eating. I popped one kernel into my mouth and it was far too hard to chew. I visited a few more temples in and around the village, and a couple of what looked like recently excavated step wells, before catching a bus back to Badami about 4.
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