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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Visiting Hampi



This weekend we traveled about 6 hours north of Bangalore to Hampi.  Hampi is in the same state that Bangalore is in, Kanartaka, but felt like an entirely different place.  It was a much smaller city that bustling Bangalore, but the terrain was different as well.  While Bangalore is flat, Hampi is filled with small mountains of granite. 

Hampi is actually an UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It is the former captial of the Vijayanagara Empire and is located within the ruins of Vijayanagara.  Hampi is an important religious center as it is home to the Virupaksha temple as well as several other monuments. 

We took more than 500 pictures during the two days were were sight seeing so I (quickly) reviewed a few and posted them here.  As I have more time to sort through the pictures and identify them I will update some more.

We went to Hampi with our friend Suzanne who is also living here in Bangalore so you'll see her in some of these pictures.  It was fun to have a travel buddy and share some laughs and memories!

This was a structure built out of granite.  Granite is not easy to carve or shape, but thousands of years ago without the equipment we have now, they cut and lifted the granite to make the amazing structures we saw this weekend.  They created tongue-and-groove joints to ensure that their buildings would be sturdy.  You can see in the picture above just how sturdy those joints are!  A huge bolder broke off and hit the monument but it is still standing.  You can see it is crooked though!

We visited many temples including the one behind me.  I think that one is more than 10 stories high.  I've grown since you saw me last!  Actually, in the background you can see the other large hills/small mountains and I'm standing on top of one for this picture.
You can see the same temple behind Bryan, Suzanne and I.  This time it's a bit closer to scale but not quite right.  You can see the tongue-and-groove joints in this structure though.

 Here are some more pictures to tempt you until I can get captions and label them.


(See - look at all that granite!)

2 comments:

  1. Wow! I bet no one was over weight back then for as hard as they must have had to work to cut and move all that rock!! As we know, granite is very heavy rock. Amazing, truly amazing. Thanks for sharing.

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  2. Haven't we seen that orange t-shirt before?
    Andrea

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