The Royal complex

08.10.11

We wanted to make the most of the cool morning today so we headed out early. We got a rickshaw the 3 or 4 km to the Archaelogical museum, to try and get our bearings around the Royal monuments complex which is south of Hampi Bazaar. There is a good birds eye scale model of the ancient city - Vijayangar.

From there we walked across lots of scrub land through various ruins to try and find the royal palace. All the ruins were pretty deserted, we eventually found our way to the royal enclosure, where there was a tiered pyramid building, with a platform on top, within the complex there was also a series of aqueducts to transport water. By this time it was getting really hot and was about midday, so we had a cold drink in the shade and then made our way towards some ruins we could see in the distance that looked rather grand!

This was a walled complex, which housed some of the Queen's buildings. There was stunning 2 storied building with loads of ornate archways on the ground floor called the Lotus Mahal and we also saw the Elephant Stables. As we were wondering around we were mobbed several times by groups of teenagers wanting photos taken with us!

Next we took a rickshaw back to the river walk, as we walking we saw Regin and Thomas in the distance. They joined us for the walk towards the Vittala temple, on the way we were able to point out to them all the strange and wonderful things we had witnessed on our walk yesterday. After, being accosted by several groups who wanted photos taken with us we entered the large gateway that led in to the Vittala temple, which was extremely impressive. Inside there were several smaller temples and buildings all very grand, swarmed with loads of Indian tourists and great views towards the other ruins against a backdrop of strange red boulders balanced precariously.

By this point we were pretty exhausted so we headed back to our guest house. This evening we got chatting to the Israeli couple we briefly chatted to in Palolem and had got the same train as us, and Italian man, Angela, and a English guy, as we ate and played cards.