Come, Share In My Travels

Hampi, the seat of the 13th-16th century Vijayanagar empire, is just 350km from southern Goa. The ancient monuments there are billed as a World Heritage Centre – and so we decided to drive there. We left Tuesday morning at 7am and were back home Wednesday evening at 8pm – although we had planned on spending 3 nights there. Apart from the monuments, everything there was terrible – and I do think that India is really missing out on her tourism potential. If this is how we show off our magnificent heritage to foreigners, I do believe the authorities in charge of tourism promotion should hang their heads in shame.

Our journey began on the Bombay-Cochin NH17, up to Ankola, 70 km south of here. After a breakfast of idlis and coffee at a roadside eatery, we took the lesser highway to Hubli via Yellapur, through the Western Ghats. The woods were lovely, dark and deep, but the traffic was terrible – all trucks, trucks and trucks. This is because of iron ore and manganese mining – the trucks carry the ores to Karwar port for export. Instead of promoting tourism – a services industry – we are promoting mining, a primary sector activity. We export mud from Karwar and Mangalore – and import nothing. We also ruin the few roads we have – and deter tourists from driving into areas that are naturally beautiful. We are converting the Western Ghats into Jharkhand: read this about what iron ore mining has done to this beautiful area, equally forested and hilly, which can also benefit hugely from tourism. Ask me: I have travelled widely in Jharkhand.

Anyway, we reached Hubli – and this city is a total, complete mess. If you are ever transferred to Hubli, change your employer.

From Hubli, we went on to Hampi via Gadag. Poverty was openly visible – this was like UP or Bihar. Miles and miles of flat, arid land with a few pockets of cotton fields and poor women picking cotton, the only crop here. Black soil.

At about 2:30pm we reached Hospet, the city closest to Hampi. We took a room in a Karnataka State-owned hotel that looked decrepit and empty. We dumped our stuff in the room and immediately set out for Hampi.

The city of Hospet was a godalmighty mess and the road to Hampi was a disaster, passing through innumerable slums. Finally, after about half an hour, we reached Hampi bazaar, where we shelled out 40 rupees to enter and park. We walked to the nearby ancient Virupapaksha Shiva temple, climbed the nearby Hemkunta hill of white boulders dotted with dozens of beautiful stone mantapas, took a walk along the riverside, had a cup of tea at a “shack” called the Reggae Restaurant, and walked back to our car. No Noble Herb at the Reggae Restaurant outside an ancient Shiva Temple!

This part of Hampi seemed to be one big slum, with innumerable “guest houses” and shacks selling services to tourists – but obviously these entrepreneurs do not possess any property titles. There was loads of garbage just outside the Shiva Temple. The beautiful riverfront smelled bad.

We returned to our hotel late that night after a quick dinner at a “food court” in a Hospet mall that had an escalator. The restaurant was modeled after a railway dining car and the food was passable. There is money in this miserable town.

The next morning we woke up early and headed out to see the rest of Hampi, which covers 14 square miles. We saw it all, and it was funny that we had to pay entrance fees twice. Note: Foreigners have to pay 25 times more than Indians – disgraceful. Further, there was a fellow on the road who took a “vehicle tax” from us. Quite naturally, there were no pucca roads to any of the sites we visited, after paying the vehicle tax.

But we saw many truly beautiful remains of a great ancient civilization. We were glad to have seen Hampi, and the grandeur of Vijayanagara. – the City of Victory.

After that, we decided to call it quits – and drove straight back home. No lunch. Glad to be back. Tourism in India is strenuous stuff.

If this sounds like a miserable travelogue, allow me to present you with a collection of entertaining travelogues I completed in 2004, in Mangalore, in optimistic times – as the Jim Morrison motto at the head of the book shows. They cover Gangotri, where the Ganga starts her long journey to the sea from the dreadlocks of Shiva, all the way to Srinagar, Kashmir, where a hair of the Prophet is kept in the Hazratbal mosque. There are travels in foreign lands too – from Switzerland, very different from Gangotri, to Amsterdam. I visit the house where Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany, where I also visit the Porsche Museum. I was overjoyed to see a huge photo of James Dean on the wall there, driving his Carrera. I am also to be found buying ganja a stone’s throw from the London headquarters of Scotland Yard!

There are also travels to other parts of India: Gujarat, Varanasi, Amritsar, Pune, Bangalore, Mangalore… all in all, a very wide collection of travelogues indeed. To read the e-book, titled From The Hair Of Shiva To The Hair Of The Prophet, click here. It is also featured permanently on the right-hand bar.