Beautiful India - Hampi it is. PART - 4 (of 4)

Day 4 - 7th Feb 2008

Again we got delayed. No power and so no hot water at the hotel. Forced delay. :(. We left the Chalukya Mayura at 9:45AM and byt the time we had breakfast it was 10AM. Way behind our schedule.

We planned to go to the Badami Caves first. Exquisite is the word that came foremost to me. There was some issue with the guides there and so we had to do our own exploring. The rock-cut temples were simply mind blowing. Imagine carving a cave out of a rock while also carving out an entire temple within. What did they do if they made a mistake? From this high position we could see the Bhoothnath temple at the edge of a pond. Perfect picture opportunity. There are four caves, 1st is Shiva temple, 2nd is a experimental cave, 3rd is a Vishnu Temple and 4th is a Jaina temple. The most impressive carvings amongst them is the Natraja, with 81 poses in one sculpture. I also noticed that there was abundance of erotic art here when compared to Hampi. These caves being older than the ruins in Hampi, this seems to suggest that the Indian society has grown into being a very narrow minded and closed society in its recent history and traditionally we were very liberal minded people.

Next we went to the Bhoothnath temple. The most impressive part here was a carving of Mahavir in a very narrow dingy cave. I was fortunate to be in the presence of a group of English tourists. They seemed to have come for some sort of a literary survey. What was fascinating was that one amongst them was talking about the carving of Mahavira and he was telling how he felt that the carving could have been Buddha actually as it had ornamentation and hair styling which are usually absent in the minimalistic Jain sculptures. This made me feel guilty as to how little I knew about my own culture. This really got me interested and now I really want to read about the history of Badami, Hampi etc.

After that we carried on to Banashankari and Mahakoota. These are mainly religious places and did not impress me a lot, especially because they were dirty and crowded. The next stop was Pattada-kallu (Coronation Stone). This temple complex impressed me immensely. The most important part of these temples according to my opinion are the exquisite pillars. They are filled with stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharatha and Panchathantra (Hindu/Jain moral stories). They were extremely descriptive and beautiful. There were also few pillars depicting the vagaries of everyday life. Some of the temples present here are the Jambulinga temple, Galaganatha temple and Kada Siddeshwara temple. All predominately shaivite temple, the two main temples being commissioned by the two Queens (sisters I believe) of Krishna Deva Raya after his victory over the kingdom of Orissa. Shiva temples were usually not destroyed as Shive being an ascetic was not supposed to have any riches with him and so these temples were supposed to be devoid of treasures. But apparently nothing stops the pathetic treasure hunters who have desecrated these temple, going to the extent of destroying the linga's too. In the 1950's, they started performing daily pooja in the Galaganatha temple after the temple complex was taken over by the Government. These temples more than made up for the disappointment of Mahakoota and Banashankari.




We went to the Aihole temple complex again after this. The temples here predate the ones in Pattadakallu. Aihole is known to be the cradle of temple architecture. There are supposed to be more than 200 temples in Aihole. Apparently the Chalukyas used this as the base of temple architecture and so there are temples of all possible architecture to be found here. Unfortunately the locals had usurped these temples in the near past and they had been leaving in these temples over a long time. The name of the temples hence has the name of the family who lived there or the profession of the people who were leaving in those temples. Unfortunately due to absence of the main deity in the temples and a lack of clear indications to be obtained from the architecture not much is known about these temples. Scientifically these temples are very well designed: including water ducts for rain water to seep through, air ducts, beautifully designed light ducts etc. One of the proof of this being the cradle of early temple architecture is clearly seen in the layered disc-designed pillars which are found in the Belur-Halebid temples which were constructed much earlier. Another interesting architecture that I found very interesting was this weird Chinese-looking temple architecture. The reason for this observation of mine was that the temple roof was constructing by placing stone slabs next to each other and then placing a log shaped stone over the crevices between the slabs to avoid water leakage. There are insignia of the Chalukya's found in these temples to clearly indicate its origin. We just had enough time to visit one more cave temple. This temple was in a pretty bad shape. The Nandi outside is hardly recognizable but the Natraja figure inside the temple is in pretty good shape. The temple had a very eerie feel to it and I was glad to be leaving the place.

After this as usual we went to the KSTDC hotel to have food. It was about 5 kms from the temple complex in Aihole. The food as usual was pretty good. I also suggest that you have buttermilk in these hotels. It is simple mind blowing and ended up having 2 glasses of it each. This meal drew over trip towards conclusion. We had a long 9 hours drive back to Bangalore ahead of us. On the way back we had 2 major troubles. There was some major Truck traffic near Hospet and believe you wouldn't have seen so many trucks in your life. There were literally hundreds of trucks on either side. I was actually very stupid and I went on the wrong side of the road to gain some ground but then came head on in front of a truck coming from the opposite side and caused a traffic jam. Very stupid of me and it freaked dad out, but we got out of it without much trouble. The other part which annoyed me a lot was that there were a lot of road bumps which were not visible in the dark and there was no signs warning me about them. So I bumped over many road bumps at full speed and we were lucky not to damage the car. We finally reached Chitradurga at 9:30PM and we had 200 kms still to cover. After some arguments with dad about where to eat our dinner, we ate at this ok but a little dirty hotel in Chitradurga. After this is it was plain sailing on the NH-4 again. I was delighted to drive on this highway again. Covered the 200kms in 2 hours and then took another hour to get home from Nelamangala. We lost our way a couple of times again but still made it home by 2:00AM which was pretty good time.

What a trip? It was absolutely fabulous. Will cherish it forever. Have included some statistics below.

Date Time Mileage Event
4th Feb 2008 6:00AM 38550 Left Bangalore
4th Feb 2008 3:30PM 38930 Reached Hampi
6th Feb 2008 8:00AM 38993 Left Hospet (Hotel Shanbog)
6th Feb 2008 9:00AM 39009 Filled fuel at Hospet
6th Feb 2008 5:30PM 39245 Reached Badami
7th Feb 2008 4:30PM 39303 Left Aihole towards Bangalore
7th Feb 2008 10:30PM 39570 Left Chitradurga towards Bangalore
8th Feb 2008 2:00AM 39793 Reached Bangalore.


Total miles covered = 1243 Kms
Mileage = approx 25kms/liter