A walk amongst ruins
Hampi, India
Hampi is a small village in Southern India. It is a strange wee place stuck between a deep spiritual history of great archealogical significance and the modern day tourist machine. There are over 1500 temples in its surrounds. It can be hard to tell what is old and what is recent history. The town is littered with half destroyed buildings. Less than 5 years ago it was a thriving tourist town with a market running down the main plaza. These were all partially bowled almost over night.
There are many stories of what is happening in Hampi. The official story is that the government wants to protect the heritage of the town due to its archealogical signficance. The story told by the locals is that men with money bought large areas of land in the nearest town of Hospet. There they plan to build large tourist developments and have struck up a deal with the government ensuring that all tourism will flow through their developments. As a result, officials have closed down most of the locally run shops & guesthouses in the little town centre of Hampi. Soon tourists will only be able to visit on a day pass arriving on buses from Hospet. It’s hard to know what to believe.
Either way, the effects on the livelihoods of people living in Hampi was evident. During the two weeks that I was there I traveled the road to Hospet often to go to the hospital where my partner was being treated for dengue fever. The local bus rattled along a big double-laned new road — a work in progress. All the houses alongside the road had their front rooms demolished leaving their interior walls as the new exterior wall (many still will inbuilt shelves visible to the road). This was just all part of progress of upgrading the area. People were just making do with what they were left with.
While the changes were evident and a little forboding, for now, Hampi is a wonderland. You can find remnants of people long passed and discover your own adventure out in the rocky landscape.
One can hike out into an endless landscape of boulders and stumble across tiny shrines, ancient temple structures, carvings, paintings, and all kinds of creatures.
On one adventure, we were in a tuktuk driving through an area that was awash with ruins. Each structure seemed to come from a different era, a different period of history where people had ruled and conquered only to be conquered and ruled by the next.
There was a particular set of ruins that caught my eye. It was beautiful and the landscape behind it was stark. Individual buildings sat half decayed in an almost barren field surrounded by a massive stone wall. It was from an era of Muslim rule. We stopped, and I ran in.
There was a building with large curved archways and stairs that lead up to them. A man was asleep in the grass at the base of the structure. I climbed the stairs taking in the curved archways that met an apex in the roof. To my left I noticed a young boy and his mother. They appeared to be cleaning.
When they saw me they both broke into smiles and approached me. They asked me to photograph them. The mother removed her white coat.
We became friends for an instant. I stayed for a moment longer and then they waved me off back down the stairs and I skipped down passed the sleeping man and back along the fallen stones to the road.
