Hampi Aihole Pattadakal Badami

These places have been beckoning me for long and the Onam vacation 2016 to be at these spots, I thought.

12/09/2016

Reached Bangalore on 12/09/2016 morning and spent the daytime meeting old friends and a visit to the Science Museum and it was really worth. Mr.Sajoo Bhaskaran and Mrs.Sadhana, both curators , spent some of their precious time for me.The mechanical Engineering and Electronics wings were exceptional. After lunch at their 4th-floor eatery, left the place when my friend called up to warn that the Kaveri agitation was taking an ugly turn and urged me to reach the railway station. The rest of my time  spent at Bangalore Central railway station's Pay and Relax room. The Hampi Express for which ticket was booked  came at 10 pm and the atmosphere at the station was pleasant, though reports of buses on flames were being shown on television screen  . Once inside the train, slept off nicely and woke up early next morning and got ready to get down at Hospet  which is the point from where my Hampi ritual is to start.

Hampi

13/09/2016

A bus took me to Hampi .Virupaksha temple came to view from a long distance. With an array of mountains all around,  protruding brown rocks of every size and shape, the whole place bore a curio look. No wonder such a lot of sculptors found expression to their creativity in full measure including the stone chariot which is world famous.
Getting down at Hampi bus stand and moving about a bit revealed to me that I should have gotten down at Kamalapura which is some 4 km before Hampi.
Caught another bus and reached Kamalapura and checked into Mayura Bhuvaneswari, run by Karnataka Tourism . Arrangements were good and the staff very cooperative.
At least the knapsack on my back could be put down now and could travel weightless.

Back to Hampi after a quick breakfast and some one hour later exploration started in an auto. The driver, a youngster, was very cooperative and explained in brief in broken Hindi whatever he knew about a particular place and a monument. What caught special attention was the elephant stables..have seen a pigsty, a cattle shed but never a place where one could house elephants!That too, eleven in a row!
The Archeological Survey people are doing a good job, giving directions using nicely designed signposts. Everywhere one finds nice lawns.
The Anjaneya hill needs a steep climb but was not worth such exertion except for a bird's eye view of the whole of Humpi.

Vithala temple, some half km walk from the foot of Anjaneya hill is indeed worth the walk and the rock chariot, about which much was heard all through , deserves a big salute. The cave called 'Sugreeva's cave' looked too tiny to have housed such a big warrior, if at all it sheltered him ever !

The roasted corn stalk available en route, sold by wayside vendors, was not enough to suffice hunger and yearned to get a good bite but there was nothing around.
The Amul vendor only had sticks but no ice creams.
A round of Virupaksha temple, a look at the Hampi Bazar' - where nothing exists except a few pillars -
got back to the hotel for a nap.
Mayra Bhuvaneswari is indeed a wonderful hotel.
Arrangements for an early outing for the next location AiHole was done in a jiffy and dozed off.

14/09/2016

Got up at 4.30am and was ready to check out by 6am.
A transport bus took me to Hosepet from where a Bijapur bound bus to Ilkal - some 2 and a half hours up north.
The road was good and on the way the passengers got an opportunity to buy fresh apples from farmers directly @Rs.60 a kg and purchased a kg, as AiHole and  Pattadakal are well known for the absence of eateries.

Got off at Ilkal, and another transport bus to Aminagad via Hungund. That bus was going directly to Badami - which is my last destination of this tour, felt bad as I was in no mood to miss out AiHole and Pattadakal which incidentally needed a detour ,for which some crude path waits for me at Aminagad.
Realised the folly of not taking a ticket to Hungund and not Ilkal in that Bijapur bound bus,boarded from Hosepet, because that very bus was seen parked next to mine at Hungund!
What all follies we travelers commit! The lesson learned is , not to get down at Ilkal, if the bus is bound for Bijapur and your next destination is AiHole!
At last it's Aminagad and from there by a smaller bus and the road - a patchy, small, namesake road - to AiHole.

AiHole

The cute little Durga Temple was simply superb and so were the other structures. The small museum by the ASI and the neatly maintained turf gave it a pristine beauty.
The main work is mostly of sandstone and the carvings are just great.The damage caused by intruding kingdoms of Mohammedan kings took its toll.The area is mainly populated by Muslim community and perhaps centuries of neglect contributed to the wanton damage to the magnificent heritage structures and again, ASI is doing a great job to this World Heritage site.
Almost all of the exquisite carvings are devoid of nose , may be because it is easier to just knock off a nose of an idol! As for the big images and idols in the sanctum sanctorum of every temple ,what awaits every visitor is just a raised pedestal from which these have been removed without trace and no one knows where to look for these.May be a full scale search in the nearby water bodies and marshes might give us an answer ! One wonders if the outside carvings appear this attractive, what the main idol would have offered a visitor!
The Durga Temple at AiHole is a real beauty and it lingers long in one's mind even after one leave the site.

Pattadakal

Next was another terrible journey to Pattadakal in an auto.
The Shiva Temple at Pattadakal - majestic!

With granite pavements all around and wonderfully maintained lawns ,these monuments looked wonderful and the mild drizzle already washed off all the dust from these rock structures ,giving these an additional shine in this cloudy backdrop, best suited for photography.
One ought to carry eatables as both these places are devoid of good eateries and if at all one finds some, the arrangements are mundane.Road to Pattadakkal from AiHole by auto was tedious and the silver lining is that a new road is getting built.Good thing.
Pattadakal to Badami by transport bus and the landscape looked very beautiful with lots of trees on either side. The rocky mountains are visible from far and the more you get closer your curiosity grows. Felt eager to get there and see for oneself the cave temples of yore which have been beckoning me for long.
But all excitement subsided once I got off the bus. Badami town - a small one in fact was full of filth dung, pigs and what not!
Took an auto to Mayura Chalukya where I had booked my accommodation.
The hotel was ok and once checked in took a hot bath and immediately got out to have a look at the cave temple sites. It was almost dusk and the entry to the cave temples would begin in the morning .

Badami

15/09/2016

Got up at 5.30 am and got out of the hotel and proceeded to the caves.Thankfully the waiter in the hotel was kind enough to arrange an auto and the auto driver promised to pick me up once the visit gets completed in the afternoon.
The caves built into sand stone mountain side are a feat to watch but the only hindrance was the clamoring visitors whose loud noises got reverberated and disturbed me in no small measure.
What we need in our country is some civic sense for not causing disturbance to the other visitors with your loud talk. No one seems to know the importance of silence.
I stayed put at Cave 1 for the others to go further up and thankfully the whole lot was a single group and no more groups are seen following behind me. The rain continued to bother and a Samaritan ASI official who was on guard duty offered his umbrella.
The first cave is dedicated to Shiva and the second to Vishnu.The third and fourth to Buddhist and Jain faiths. The Jain artifacts carry enough indications to suggest that the carvings were doctored in later years to resemble Theerthankaras. One thing is clear - that these were the sites were Buddhist faiths prevailed and later Jain and Hindu traditions got added
The caves in a semicircular formation around the vast pond with a waterfall on one side (thanks to the rain the previous days) was a visual delight. The caves and the work by sculptors on the ceiling and the sides can only be viewed with mouths agape as these were crafted out of solid rocks by how many artists  working for how long we do not know.
The ASI official was of the view that the damage done to these works could not be attributed to invading kings because for long these were occupied by tribes who made it their shelter.For them these meant nothing other than a simple den.
The lake around which hundreds of dhobi families have been thriving for long is another eye sore.

the best thing the Karnataka govt could do is to plan rehabilitating these people where they could continue using the lake but at the same time live at a convenient place not far off from the area.Surely their presence within the area with all their cattle and foul and absence of toilets makes it really filthy.

Despite all these odds the ASI is doing a great job not just in maintaining what ever is left but keeping a good watch on the visitors who are hell bent on graffiti. Two guards were seen rubbing off names using wet cloth enroute Tippu's Fort .Another person was seen collecting plastics thrown away by someone.Good work. Our public would take some more time to learn the basics.

Tippu made his fort which is nothing but a huge solid rocky hillock with bricks reinforcements to do away the crevices. The watch towers at the top and the canons and last but not the least, what a view to have from the top !

There is a Durga temple a small Shiva temple and a mosque at the top.
Badami Caves are wonderful and not to be missed.
An overnight bus took me to Mangalore and from there by train and back home on the fifth day!