Hampi

The Tungabhadra bend has been a sacred place far longer than the empire that made it famous. Hemakuta Hill carries shrines from before the 14th century, and the Virupaksha temple has been in worship for many hundreds of years. Tradition identifies the surrounding hills with Kishkindha, the monkey kingdom of the Ramayana, and Anjanadri across the river with the birthplace of Hanuman, which still brings pilgrims.

Vijayanagara was founded in 1336 by the brothers Harihara and Bukka, whose base lay at Anegundi on the northern bank. Protected by the river and by lines of granite hills, the city grew into the capital of an empire that at its height covered most of peninsular India. Persian and Portuguese visitors described markets selling diamonds and horses, irrigation canals and aqueducts, and an army of great size; under Krishnadevaraya, who ruled from 1509 to 1529, the Vittala and Hazara Rama temples and much of the royal centre took their present form, and the city was among the largest in the world.

In 1565 the combined armies of the Deccan sultanates defeated Vijayanagara at the battle of Talikota. The capital was abandoned and systematically plundered over several months, and it was never reoccupied. The surrounding countryside continued as farmland and the Virupaksha temple kept its congregation, but the palaces, halls and bazaars stood empty. British surveyors recorded the site in the 19th century, archaeological work began under the colonial administration and has continued since, and the Group of Monuments at Hampi was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. Clearance of unauthorised buildings from the bazaar street has changed the village considerably.

Two quite different worlds share the same boulders. One is religious: the Virupaksha temple is a living shrine with daily worship, an annual chariot festival and a steady flow of pilgrims, and Anjanadri Hill draws crowds who climb its steps chanting the name of Hanuman. Rituals at the river, oil lamps at dusk and the temple's drums are part of the ordinary evening in the village.

The other is the traveller culture that grew from the 1990s, when Hampi became a fixture on the backpacker route between Goa and Bengaluru. The north bank in particular filled with cafes, yoga classes and bouldering on the granite, giving the north bank a relaxed, international air that the more conservative village does not share. The authorities regulate the sacred zone closely, and rules on building, noise and overnight stays have reshaped both banks over the past fifteen years.

Local culture is that of northern Karnataka: Kannada speech, an agricultural calendar built on the canal irrigation that follows the Tungabhadra, and crafts at Anegundi that include banana-fibre weaving and lambani embroidery sold through village cooperatives. Visitors are asked to respect the sacred character of the place — modest dress, shoes off at shrines, no climbing on carved stone — and guides trained by the archaeological authorities are readily found at the main monuments.

Hampi village itself holds only a few thousand people, and the wider settlement pattern is of farming hamlets — Kamalapura, Anegundi, Kaddirampura — around a World Heritage site that dominates everything. Hosapete, 13 kilometres away, is the real town of the area, with a population in the low hundreds of thousands, the railway station, hospitals, markets and the offices that serve the district.

Work divides between agriculture and tourism. Canals from the Tungabhadra Dam water paddy, sugarcane and the banana plantations that make the green band along the river, and iron ore mining and steel plants around Ballari and Vidyanagar employ many in the wider district. In the village, guesthouses, cafes, guiding, rickshaw driving and the coracle crossings depend on a season that runs from October to March and falls away in the summer heat.

Daily rhythm follows the sun and the temperature: early starts, a long pause through the middle of the day, and life returning to the bazaar street in the late afternoon, when visitors climb the hills for sunset and villagers bathe and wash at the river. Heritage protection sets the terms of local life, restricting new building in the protected zone, and the clearance of shops and houses from the bazaar street remains a difficult memory for the families affected.

Eating in Hampi means two menus. Inside the sacred area the food is vegetarian: idli, dosa, uttapam and filter coffee in the morning, a rice thali at midday with sambar, rasam and vegetable dishes, and the international traveller repertoire of pancakes, fruit bowls, pasta and thali variations that has grown up in the cafes of the bazaar and the north bank. Lassi, lime soda, tender coconut and sugarcane juice matter more than they would in a cooler place.

The region's own cooking is north Karnataka food, easier to find in Hosapete and at village houses than in the traveller cafes. Its centrepiece is jolada rotti, a dry flatbread of white sorghum, eaten with ennegayi — small brinjals stuffed with a peanut, sesame and coconut masala — with a fiery chutney powder, groundnut chutney, curds and a lump of jaggery on the side. Spicy dry vegetable palya, sprouted-bean saaru and rice complete a plate that is quite unlike coastal Karnataka's coconut cooking.

Sweets are the other regional strength: kardantu from Gokak, holige or obbattu — a flatbread stuffed with lentils and jaggery, made at festivals — and the Karnataka standards of Mysore pak and dharwad pedha, sold in the sweet shops of Hosapete. Banana, grown in plantations on the plain around the ruins, appears fried, in lassi and as the leaf on which meals are served.