Reunion reflections

 

We Went Looking for Vijayanagara and Found Vidyanagar

We have never been a family that takes easily to road trips. With two kids who weren't particularly car-friendly, long drives were something we generally avoided.

Unless, of course, we were with friends or family, when both kids would get bundled in with the company of other kids. Our outlook changed when we did our first long road trip as a family to South Wales. We consider that one of the best trips we have done as a family. It's a pity we didn't chronicle it.

With the mental block around car travel finally starting to wear away, and with Mishika studying about the Vijayanagar Empire in history, there was no better time to squeeze in a short holiday than the October 2nd weekend. M's exams had just got over on September 30th, so we decided it made sense for her to bunk a day of school.

My initial plan was to break the car journey and cover Chitradurga Fort on the way to Hampi, but then I realised that the fort by itself needs a good 3–4 hours for exploration. It didn't make sense to club it with Hampi; it probably deserved a trip of its own.

Some last-minute research landed me on a shorter exploration site: the 12th-century Jain temples atop Mandaragiri Hills.

At a comfortable, convenient distance from Bangalore, about a 2–2.5-hour drive from home, with plenty of breakfast outlets on the way, this made for a perfect quick stop.

We started by around 6:45 AM and reached the breakfast stop, Hotel Nanjundeshwara, just 10-15 minutes from the temple, right on time, just as Avikshith was getting "hangry". Super-quick service and breakfast ensured we were on top of the hill by 9:45 AM.

While there are steps that take you to the top, private cars are also allowed to drive up. The view was breathtaking. The Jain temple there is almost 1,000 years old and was renovated a couple of years ago. 

We then drove on towards Hampi, with a quick, forgettable lunch stop. Since we were on track with time and would reach Hampi by 4 PM, I made a quick decision to trek up Matanga Hill.

Turned out to be another great decision.

We had started our climb from the main parking lot, with the Virupaksha Temple to the left. The initial climb was rather easy, with some uneven steps carved out.

As we climbed higher, the steps disappeared. Some stretches were nothing but steep, smooth boulders, with absolutely nothing to hold on to and a terrifying drop on the other side. One wrong step, and you could quite literally slide into oblivion!

I was getting increasingly anxious, especially since neither Avikshith nor I had proper footwear with a good grip. And the thought that we'd have to descend the very same route was hardly comforting.

We took a small break at what we thought was the summit. By then, monkeys had started appearing and jumping around. We were soon joined by a huge group of college students from Kerala and two vendors with water, tea, etc., who were on their way to the top.

With some help from the Kerala group and the vendors, we managed to climb up some more of the slippery slopes and finally reach the top, where the Shiva temple stood.

The views were breathtaking. We could see Hampi in its full glory from the top — the blue waters of the Tungabhadra flowing through, the Achyutaraya Temple and the markets looking amazing from above!

Avikshith and Mishika helped themselves to some very yummy boost that the vendors brought along. Thankfully, the vendors guided us to another route that had well-laid steps and finally brought us down to the Achyutaraya Temple complex.

                                                             Enroute Matanga   

                                                        Boost is the secret of my Energy

    

    

                                                        Temple Atop matanga

We were joined in our descent by an elderly man who was visiting Hampi from Pune. He had left his family back at the hotel and had come alone for the trek, knowing they wouldn't be able to climb those rocks.

By the time we were down, it was already 6:45 PM and getting dark, and our hotel was an hour away, so we decided to have a quick dinner at Hampi.

The gentleman who had descended with us recommended Gopi Restaurant, right next to Virupaksha, as a good place for dinner, and after the forgettable lunch and two hours of climbing and thrills, it was definitely worth it.

By the time we got into the car at 8 PM, the kids just got into the back seat and crashed!

Arun and I knew we had an hour's drive ahead of us, because we had booked the Hyatt, which is outside Hampi in a place called Vidyanagar.

The night drive was something we didn't enjoy — no street lights, cars flashing their headlights at full beam, and an unfamiliar road in the dark. It wasn't a pleasant drive through unknown territory.

We had no idea that the hotel — and, more unexpectedly, the township it sat in — would become one of the biggest highlights of our trip. Vidyanagar was a discovery we hadn't planned for, and one we certainly hadn't anticipated falling in love with.

Hyatt is housed inside the Vidyanagar township, a township created and maintained by Jindal Steel. The township is a super-well-maintained, super-pretty little city of its own, with a school and preschool, hotel, temple, gardens, a world-class sports club and even a theatre inside!

Primarily meant for employees and families of people working in Jindal Steel and ancillary industries, never did we imagine that we would visit Hampi and come back with stories about Vidyanagar.

The property itself was beautiful, and we were lucky to get a room facing the lawns.

Having slept off in the car the previous day, Avikshith woke up squealing in delight as he saw the lawns. He promptly made himself a milk powder drink and sat with it on the lawns.

The children would have easily spent the day there, but we had come with a purpose of visiting Hampi, so we coaxed them — specifically A — into the day's plan with a promise to spend the next day exploring the hotel.

Day 2 was dedicated to Hampi.

We got a good but horrendously expensive guide who took us to Virupaksha, Vittala and the Krishna Temple. By then, the long-weekend crowd had started to throng these places. It was blazing hot, and no amount of water was enough to keep us hydrated.

We still got a good insight into history — most of which we had already learnt through Mishika — and some new bits of information.

For example, that Krishnadevaraya had a wife from Kalinga, and that the Stone Chariot was actually inspired by the Konark Temple and is one of the three stone chariots in India.

Virupaksha was equally beautiful. The mirror image of the gopura, visible through the small opening inside the temple, was beyond amazing. It makes you wonder what kind of scientific knowledge the architects of that era possessed.

My original plan after visiting the Hampi ruins was to go to the sloth bear sanctuary, but it soon became clear that we wouldn't be able to make it to the sanctuary by 3:30 PM.

So we decided we would finish the Royal Centre and then head back to the hotel.

Quick lunch at what our guide promised was the best restaurant in Hampi — which turned out to be just about okay — and then a quick tour of the Royal Centre.

    

Virupaksha - wrapped in a dhoti cause apparantly my dress wasnt appropriate enough!

The elephant stables where special very tall elephants sourced from Lanka were kept

The kids were exhausted by the scorching heat, so we headed to my next plan: the Kaladham Museum.

It happened to be right next to the hotel, so it seemed like the next best thing to do. While the museum itself was closed due to Gandhi Jayanti, the place just blew our minds.

The museum just happened to be one part of Kaladham. The beauty, the greenery, the trees, the pond, the ducks swimming around lazily — it just took our breath away.

Mishika almost instantly said, "Amma, this looks like the UK." Well, it wouldn't be wrong to say it was far better than the UK!

We easily spent more than an hour there, with the kids just running around, while Arun and I talked about what a perfect, dreamy location this would be for a wedding.

He even joked about us renewing our vows here.

Talk about nature bringing out the romantic mood from the depths!

the gardens of kaladham

The kids wanted to spend some time in the room, so Arun and I borrowed a cycle and went around Vidyanagar township.

We were amazed by what we found: sprawling gardens, a full-fledged cricket stadium, children's play areas, a beautiful temple, a state-of-the-art sports club with everything from squash to volleyball, and a beautiful lake.

It felt less like a corporate township and more like a little city designed around the life you could live in it. 

And perhaps that is why Vidyanagar felt so strangely familiar to me. In many ways, it transported me back to the years I spent as a child in the Diamond Cements factory township in Narsinghar — a similar setup, although nowhere near as developed.

Walking around Vidyanagar, I felt like I was reliving those years I spent in my own small, enclosed, ensconced world. Where we had a school within walking distance, and we probably ended up knowing almost everyone in the school simply because everyone had one thing in common: we all lived in the same township. Where we had one mandatory evening every week at the temple, when the entire school — including the principal and teachers — would join us for prayer. Where Holi was celebrated with wild abandon, with the entire colony turning up to drag you out of your house. Where Diwali meant joining huge groups of children going from house to house, eating Diwali snacks at every home in the colony. Where we chased butterflies in the garden right in front of our house. Where barely at six or eight years old, we could walk around the township all by ourselves, with the kind of carefree freedom that children today rarely get.

And there were innumerable such small, sweet memories that made those primary-school years so delightful.

Perhaps that was what I was responding to in Vidyanagar without even realising it — the familiarity of a world that was small enough for everyone to know everyone, safe enough for children to wander freely, and full enough of little rituals and shared experiences that ordinary days became memories.

Although we had a couple more things on our to-do list — the Anjanadri Hills and the sloth bear sanctuary — we knew we would have to sacrifice at least one to spend more time in the township.

So the next day, we let the kids sleep in.

After a good breakfast, we took them to the sports club, where we explored the squash courts, played a couple of games of badminton and peeked into the theatre.

Then we finally headed towards the beautiful garden, where Aviks discovered some new varieties of trees and seeds that we hadn't seen before.

Both of them then wanted to jump into the pool, and before we knew it, it was 3 PM.

Having come so far, we had to do Anjanadri Hills. Around 3:30 PM we started our drive towards Anjanadri, the birthplace of Hanuman.

En route, I found a foreigner walking with what seemed like a very heavy backpack in the scorching sun. We decided to give him a lift.

Apparently, he was a Russian backpacker who had travelled all the way from Delhi to Hampi — through Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat — entirely by getting lifts in cars!

He decided to join us as we trekked the hills.

The climb wasn't very hard — around 500 steps till you reached the hilltop and the swayambhu idol of Hanuman. The views and the way up were stunning.

We helped ourselves to some very spicy prasadam. To my dismay, Mikhael very casually mentioned that it was his first meal of the day!

I felt a little sad that he hadn't mentioned this earlier. We had a bag full of food with us!

But his spirit was inspiring.

Here was someone travelling with very little money, relying on the kindness of strangers and whatever food came his way, carrying a tent or hammock so he could spend the night wherever he found a place.

A true traveller, experiencing the culture, food and people first-hand — without quite knowing where the next day would take him.

We bid goodbye to Mikhael, although Arun couldn't stop worrying about him and wondered where he would sleep in the dark, unlit streets of Hampi, surrounded by king cobras and rat snakes!

                            View from the climb up to Anjanadri

                                            Super Cute Monkey Family

We had dinner at one of the restaurants inside Vidyanagar township called "Converter" and called it a night.

The next day was travel back to Bangalore for us.

We had set out hoping to bring back stories of the Vijayanagar Empire.

And we did.

But we returned with stories of another world altogether — the unexpected discovery of Vidyanagar, a little township that had captured our imagination in ways we could never have planned.

I suspect Arun and I will keep daydreaming about living in a place like Vidyanagar until our next destination comes along, which is not too far away!

                    Lake in Vidyanagar - Our last stop before heading out for bangalore