A Trip to Hampi Part 2

Our second day at Hampi started from Hampi Bazaar. Viru explained that each major temple had a bazaar where people would come to sell or trade their goods. He said that the Hampi Bazaar was the largest in the world (or nearly so). Much of what is seen today has been reconstructed, but only to give an idea how long it is. Some of the original bazaar is being used as housing- some probably for many generations, but the remainder is just granite posts and beams with no roof. All of the stone at Hampi is white granite- very hard and heavy and difficult to work, yet they carved lots of figures from it.
We walked all along the bazaar and past an unfinished Nandi Bull sculpture at the end. A number of things were unfinished at Hampi at the time it was sacked. At the end of the bazaar we walked up a hill and went down the other side to find another huge temple complex with its own bazaar which was quite long. There were practically no people here- except for a guy talking on his mobile phone and getting in the way of our pictures. Viru said that most Indians don't take the time to see many of the places away from the areas where they arrive and park their vehicles. He said it is mostly foreign tourists who make the trip. We figure that 500 year old ruins are not so rare in India and people figure they can always come back, but probably don't.
After walking around this temple complex we walked the length of the bazaar which took us to the river where we stopped for a bottle of water. Viru arrange for a ride on the river in a "coracle"- a circular boat- which is very popular here. The 3 of us got in with the pilot/paddler and we headed off down stream for awhile. This was very nice except that Janet got tar from the boat on her arms and Jim lost his camera lens cap. However, those problems were later rectified. The tar was handled after a stop at a petrol station to get some gasoline to remove the tar and Viru called the pilot to see if he could find the lens cap- and he did! In any case, the trip down the river was very relaxing. We floated past the ruins of many temples on the way. At the end we saw the stone columns that supported a bridge in the 1500's. The bridge is long gone, but the columns remain.
Earlier in 2009- late August there were huge rain storms in this area and the river level rose to very high levels. We asked how high the water was and it was rather scary to see where they said it went. In the pictures you can see color differences in the stone- apparently the water was above the gray colored stones.
Joseph, our driver, met us with the car at the end of the boat ride and we went off to lunch at a well known restaurant along the river. Afterword, we went to see more ruins around the "sacred center"- including a huge monolithic sculpture of "Ganesha".
On our 3rd day and second full day we started off at another huge temple complex for which we had to pay a fee. We have been told that as legal residents of India we can pay the Indian rates to enter sites instead of the foreigner rates which are often 10 to 20 times higher than the Indian rates. The fees are not huge even at the foreign rate, but since we pay Indian taxes, it makes sense that we should pay the Indian rate. However, the people collecting money see it differently. From the color of one's skin they determine that you are or are not an Indian and charge accordingly. We argued with them for awhile, but since they do not speak or understand English very well in most cases and since we don't speak any of the other Indian languages (Hindi and English are the most widely understood), our arguments are not taken seriously. Viru attempted to argue in our favor, but the guy told him that anyone can get an Indian tax ID card and there are many fakes around. In any case, we paid the full rate. The entry to this temple site also got us into another site later.
This temple has a famous stone "chariot" sitting outside the temple and the temple is sometimes called the musical temple. Viru explained that we can no longer demonstrate the musical nature of the temple, but he said that because of the way the columns are carved one can strike different columns and get different sounds. So many thousands of people have done this that some are worn and they decided it was time to stop this.
Later we went to see the elephant stables. This is also a famous structure near a palace. The architecture looks Mughal or Islamic, but Viru said that the builders here were Hindu and simply copied from other places.
We more- or- less ended the day with a stop at the "underground temple". This is a site where the temples appear to have been placed below ground level, but Viru explained that when they were built they were at ground level, but from flooding of the river and deposition of silt they were buried over the centuries. The site was excavated around 30 years ago to uncover a very nice, though somewhat plain, temple. However, because of agriculture nearby the ground water level is high enough now that the floor of the temple is always under several inches of water, so we did not go in.