Day 0 (24 Jan 2014) - 9 50 pm to 7 AM
Having registered for the event, pretty early, I eagerly waited for the day to come. 24 January 2014 was the day, and I was rearing to go. This was a photography event, but photography was second on my mind, I was more interested travelling out of town, visiting a new place, adding some more memorable moments. And indeed it turned out better than what I anticipated. Apart from the quality time, which I spent, whole event turned out with lots of surprises, which in the end left me with only one option, to write a bigger blog post.
I came to Shantala silks at around 9 50 pm, and was waiting for the vehicle to arrive. Once the cab arrived people started boarding the cab and I went back to put the luggage inside the boot which was big, (enough to hold 15+ full size backpacks). When I boarded the cab I occupied the last seat, where I met Jawahar. I spoke to him for a while and soon (even before Jalahalli cross) he was off to sleep. I was joined by Pramod at Jalahalli cross. I spoke to him about our usual IT stuffs and soon spoke with Vasanth too, who was sitting in the last but one seat, to my front.
I too was dozed off to sleep only to be woken up by some pot holes along the NH 13. We were not being tossed up in the last seat, but it was not so comfortable either. Luckily I managed to catch some sleep and wake up only after reaching Hospet, where we were kind of doing circles, trying to find the shortest route to Kamalapura. In Hospet, one thing I noticed was the sizable number of people who were engaged in morning walks. That came as a surprise to me, (and I guess even to Dr Harish too who told me, about it later), who was expecting a sleepy town.
Day 1 (25 Jan 2014) - 7:20 AM to 9 30 AM
We reached Kamalapura around 7:20 am, and we made our way to the Mayura KSTDC guest house. The accommodation had quite a huge campus. It was at a distance from the main road, hence, ensuring lots of parking space, lots of space to roam around, and very less noise. It also guaranteed a nice place for camp fire. Did we carry any wood for camp fire? More about it shortly. There were two dormitories which were made available for us, and soon people starting getting freshened up. Till I got a turn to get freshened up, Vinay, Dr Harish, Harsha and me, went out to Kamalapura, to get some much needed stuffs.
At around 9 30 am odd, once everyone was ready, we started from the KSTDC guest house towards the LOST CITY of Hampi. It felt good, really good, to be back after so many years. We had to have our breakfast, before that, Vinay, Dr Harish and Ram or Sumant (not sure who) got down and paid a visit to the Information Officer at Kamalapura, to fix our Itinerary so that we could make most out of the two days. Finally around 15 minutes later all of them were back. We were also in luck as the Information Officer also got us hooked up our guide for the next two days, Satish, who would be waiting for us at the Virupaksha temple.
Then we headed out to a nearby hotel which seemed to be nice as told by the Officer earlier. It was good, but it turned out to be too slow and we lost some time and it impacted us and we ended up not making it to the Sunset point on Mathunga Hill on Day 1. More on that later. Also in the KSTDC accommodation we had lots of other people, infact a whole group of architecture students from Delhi. ( Got this info from the Officer, who told he himself would have accompanied us, in case he was not occupied with this group). But none the less, our guide packed an equal punch. (who also belted out some emotional, appreciative lines towards end of day 2, while we were about to depart to Bangalore).
Day 1 (25 Jan 2014) - 10 45 AM to 2 PM
We met our guide Satish and proceeded towards Virupaksha temple. Virupaksha temple is the oldest and the principal temple in Hampi. Virupaksha is a form of Shiva. On the way we could see a huge shuttered structure, most likely the chariot, we could see the Hampi market. As we enter we can find a 3 headed Basavanna to our left. Also very close to the entrance we could see an inscription of Varaha. Our guide Satish told us that, this has been inscribed so that, enemies / invaders would retreat on the sight of this. We saw such an inscription on couple of other temples too. We entered into the temple, and completed the Darshan. The guide showed us few paintings which were present on the ceiling and he also explained to us the significance of few of them. There are also shrines of Goddess Pampa and Bhuvaneshwari. We went there too. Also there were couple of places within the temple premises very close to the shrines where our guide could show us the natural camera. The inverted shadow of the temple Gopura is very very clearly visible in natural light through a small opening in the wall.
