Hampi, India and the Complex of Temples

Photos from the temple complex of Hampi, India.

If you ever wanted to know what it feels like to be a celebrity, try being a blonde American girl traveling in Hampi, India. While I’ve had those feelings elsewhere in India, especially throughout the South of the country, no where were they as strong, no where was I stopped as much, as in Hampi.

People stopped me all over — on the street, at attractions, in cafes — wanting to get their photo taken with me. Or wanting me to take a photo of them with my camera even though they would never see it beyond the two-second preview afterwards. They clung to me like I clung to the puppies outside my hotel.

Sometimes it was hard to get around, to enjoy wandering through the ruins, to enjoy the moment, as people lined up to get their photos taken with me. The attention was nice, for a while, but then it got too much. It was, sometimes, ahem, exhausting.

Hampi, India, itself was a nice place. Quaint. Quiet. We traveled there to see the ruins but, as it turned out, many of the ruins were much more recent deconstructions as the government is tearing down many of the local buildings to help preserve the UNESCO World Heritage monuments. One of those things that simultaneously makes no sense and all the sense. One of those things that is so perfectly India.

Jaime and Dani and Jessica, and I hired a tour guide who took us around the temple complex in a rickshaw to see the town’s most famous sites: the 16th-century Vittala Temple, Zenana Enclosure with the Elephant Stables and Lotus Mahal, Lakshimi Narasmiha, Sule Bazaar, and Virupaksha Temple (one of the city’s oldest structures, and Hampi’s only remaining working temple).

We ended up just spending about three days in Hampi, though I could have spent longer, much longer, lingering, enjoying the nice little boulder-filled town.

Photos from the ruins of Hampi, India: