The Virupaksha temple, dedicated to the goddess Shiva. The intricacy of the carvings astounded me. They make you take your shoes off - which is par for the course in regular homes, let alone sacred sites - but the stones are BOILING hot and there's elephant and monkey poop everywhere, so it's kind of an adventure.
One of the aforementioned pooping monkeys.
A couple of kids hamming it up on the back of an ancient stone nandi (bull).
My favorite thing about Hampi wasn't actually the architecture, but the landscape. There were all these geometrically-shaped, red rocks stacked in precarious ways. It looked like God got interrupted in the middle of a game of Jenga.
I joined a tour group in the afternoon and we hiked up a hill to some ruins that were further out of town. At one point on the walk, we (nine adults) got in the boat pictured here (called a coracle) to cross the Tungubhadra River.
One of the most impressive features at Hampi was this stone chariot. I wasn't listening to the tour guide very closely at this point, so I can't tell you how old it is or who made it or what it means, BUT it looked really cool.
At the end of the day I watched the sunset over the ruins from the top of the hill. Not bad.
1 comment:
ANNA!!!!!! How fun to see your comment on my blog. Look at you leading the exotic life, how cool! I saw your Mom about a month ago and she told me that you were off to see the world. I love blogs, now I can keep up on how your life is! I think of you often!! Love you!!!!
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