Hampi in May – A Roadtrip

Budget – INR 9000

Highlights:

1. Camping at Hippie Hampi
2. Stone Chariot temple
3. Virupaksha temple
4. The Hampi Bazaar
5. Queens’ bath
6. Lunch at Orange County

Hampi is a famous attraction in South India for architectural ruins of Vijayanagar Empire spread in a radius of 5 kms. It is also famous for its natural beauty. Most people travel to Hampi by overnight bus/train from Bangalore. But we chose the road option as we wanted to go for a long drive too.

The total distance from Bangalore to Hampi ~400kms.
Our itinerary was as follows:
1) Day 1 -> Bangalore to Chitradurga with snacks break near Tumkur city (Stay at Mayura Yatrinivas with the Chitradurga fort view)
2) Day 2 -> Chitradurga to Hampi with tea break in between
3) Day 3 -> Hampi to Bangalore with lunch break at a Punjabi Dhaba

Day1: As we started around 4 pm from Bangalore, It grew quite dark by the time we reached Chitradurga. We tried to find a camping spot in Chitradurga but it is quite a small town with no concept of camping so we had to book a hotel. Karnataka Government has a chain of budget and quite good hotels with the name of “Mayura”. We stayed at Mayura Yatrinivas which was located right opposite to Chitradurga fort. It was hardly 2.5kms from the main highway. We got a dorm room as all their rooms were sold out. It costed us hardly 1.5k for the whole of an 8 bed dorm.

Day2: We started early morning from Chitradurg and drove for next 1.5hrs to reach Hampi. As it was early May, it started getting hot by 10am in the morning.
The moment you enter hampi, you start loving the beauty of it. We could see boulders on the sides of our way along with greenery which helped us in keeping our tempo up, despite of the heat.

The visit to Hampi can be divided into 2 parts:
1) Historical hampi/ Hampi village – The part of hampi that has architectural ruins and religious importance.
2) The Hippie Hampi/ Hampi island/ Virupapura Gadde – The part of hampi that is beautiful because of its greenery and the crowd it attracts. You will find it full of foriegners.

We covered the following places in the old Hampi:
1) Virupaksha temple – It is also called the Lord Shiva temple. The google maps took us to the temple from the wrong side, (which happened to be quite scenic too) So we had to park our car right opposite to Tungabhadra river, inside the temple premise. The first view of the temple was quite majestic. But the sad part was You have to walk barefoot in the temple. It was so hot that I almost burnt my feet 😦
2) The Hampi Bazaar: The Hampi market stands right next to the Virupaksha temple. It has a great collection of souveniers, handlooms etc. You can easily rent bikes too at a price as cheap as Rs 100 per day. As the ruins in Hampi are spread in a radius of 5kms, we wanted to bike around Hampi in those bikes. But sadly the weather wasn’t in favor of it. There are autorickshaw drivers willing to take you around Hampi ruins while also acting as tour guides for as low as Rs800. But we decided to take our own car to beat the heat. We bought a map from a small stall and mapped it to google maps and started our trip
3) Queens’ bath: Our next stop was at queen’s bath where we also hired a guide. We took the guide in our car and he showed us around, with minute detials of things which we might not have noticed otherwise. There are 3 other sites near Queen’s bath as shown in the map below. You need an entry ticket at the Janana garden which will also be used at the entry of Stone car temple.
4) Stone Chariot temple: The stone chariot temple is the temple whose picture is present in all the Hampi related sites/maps. Historywise it is the main attraction of Hampi. It is located at a distance 2.5kms by walk and around 8kms by car. You have to take a battery operated car to reach to the top which hardly costs Rs20 per person. Though I found the stone car a little overhyped, but some parts of the temple were really beautiful. There is amazing artwork on all the wall. Thanks to our guide who showed us at the corners of the temple some sculptures which looked like a frog in one angle, a lion in another, Lord Hanuman, the monkey god, in one angle and the array of night lamps that could be lit in such a fancy way. Our guide also showed us some pillars which sounded like “sa re ga ma…” when you tapped on them. We would not have seen all this w/o a guide.

By the time we were done with all temples, it was lunch time and we were already feeling hungry. We decided to go in search of good food. That’s when Orange County Hampi came in picture. It is at a distance of around 10kms from the Stone Chariot temple. (Anything for good food 🙂 ). We didnt regret our decision.

This marked the end of our “historical tour of Hampi”. Had it been the “right weather” we would have probably enjoyed the ruins more. But for the weather of May too, thanks to the AC of our car, we enjoyed it thoroughly.

Hippie Hampi
There were a lot of foreigners and shacks. There were huge rocky hills also. In proper weather, a lot of people do camping there. We read about it in blogs. But it was quite empty. No one was camping. We went to the hilltop to see the sunset. there was a group of campers who were camping near Sanapur Lake. They asked us to join them, but that hill was too beautiful to leave it w/o camping. So we decided to stay.

Our batteries were running out and we forgot to bring a torch and even matchstick. Borrowed a lighter from fellow passengers, a torch from the nearby shack and started pitching our tent. It had grown quite dark and we had a lot of stuff to carry on top of the hill from our car. All the sunset visitors had left by then. We forgot the way to the top in the second round. The torch came handy then. On our third round to the hill, a locale told that there are bears and leopards on the hill. We stopped another passer-by to confirm the same and he also said the same thing. but as most of our stuff were on the hills, we took a leap of faith and just went ahead with the camp. A little scared a little worried, a little excited, we passed our night, only to wake up to an amazing view in the morning. It was all worth it.

Packed the tent and everything back and started for Sanapur Lake. It is famous for cliff jumping “in the right weather”. The water was low. But then as we were stopping passing by people to know the cliff jumping stop, we coincidently stopped a certified cliff jumper. He took us to a location which had sufficient water. We jumped from there. It was fun.

Then we started our journey back home, stopping near the windmills, having lunch at a roadside (but really amazing slurp slurp) Punjabi Dhaba and a dam one the way in VaniVilasapura.

Overall it was fun. 🙂

Expense	Amount spent for 2 (In INR)
Petrol for the whole trip	4000
Toll on the way to hampi	150
Lunch in bangalore	500
Snacks in Tumkur	200
Dorm in Chitradurga	1700
Dinner in Chitradurga	300
Tea on the way to Hampi	40
Parking in Hampi	20
Entry ticket to ruins	90
Battery car to Stone car temple	60
Early dinner at Orange County, Hampi	1500
Breakfast at Goan Cottage, Hampi	300
Toll on the way back to Bangalore	150
Total	9010

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