Dusty Hospet is the perfect entry point for the much hyped Hampi. The most run down town which nudges my mood to one of sadness. This is just another town that has been neglected by the Indian government. Chaotic traffic, errant auto rickshaws and shabby hotels. At the bus station I climb into one of the rusty state buses and buy a 10 Re ticket to Hampi. As I settle down at 6 a.m in the morning I had no clue what to expect of Hampi. And stared unseeingly out playing random images in my mind. Never one to give in to too much contemplation that day uncharacteristically I was completely oblivious to the route till I saw a pile of rocks. Not just a pile I realized. Piles of rocks. Everywhere I could see. Piles and piles of rocks heaped onto each other. As if a giant baby has scattered its pebbly playthings around the landscape.
2 days into the trip and I still was soaking in the atmosphere. Ruins stretching out everwhere. The sun shining remorselessly on the rocks, the rocks resolutely standing their ground. I did not even know when my hired death trap of a kinetic Honda ran out of fuel or where I had discarded it. I just walked, chanced upon a smiling villager with a bottle filled with red petrol. Money changed hands, I reversed direction. Soon back on the bike I travelled.
It got better. Tungabhadra winding its way through this landscape. Too good to resist. I clambered onto the corakal. Rishyamukha mountains, the matanga hill, Kishkindha empire. All coasted past under the pointing fingers of Umapathi, the oarsman. If there was something that registered in my mind it was the vastness and desolate and magnificent scale of the whole place. A week more alone there and I would have dissolved there I think. Good that I could pull myself away from that vortex. If I go there again, I wont go alone. I might not make it back.
