Rowdy Rathore, remember the Akshay and Sonakshi's movie! This is the place where they filmed the entire movie, where they beat the badass villains. Badami is the place, a 360 degree area.. surrounding a water body. Badami got its name from the brown shade of the region due to gigantic rocks and its caves, a number of temples, castle and scenic location where every spot is photogenic.
P.s : you may run out of camera memory! every place needs to be clicked.
Starting the circle:
going round the crater, caves come first to be visited. The caves were chiseled and crafted out of the entire rocks in ancient time during 7th century in Chalukyas kingdom. Caves have been engraved with mighty Hindu gods, daily life of ancient lifestyle, Gautam buddha etc. In the hot afternoon the cool caves takes back you to old days and mesmerize you with the art and skill of artists who engraved the walls of Badami rocks.
There are four caves, all having large courtyard standing on pillars resided by Hindu deities and the center being occupied by Lord Shiva.
Proceeding to complete the circle:
After having lunch at a beautiful restaurant which had interesting furniture and interiors, we started our circle.
Going around, a number of temples of Nag Devta (snake god) and lord Shiva can be seen. Proceeding further there is a museum having collection of Badami artifacts. During the walk we passed through the narrow lanes of residential caves which may be was resided by the ancient people of the kingdom. Some temples are located on the cliff of rocks which we climbed to get more close to this awesome place. From the above the entire area looks like a crater guarded by the enormous rocks.
Seeing this splendid region we imagined the times back when ancient civilization used to live here. I thought of the rainy season when this place may offer another picturesque views in brown backdrop.
Ending towards the circle:
Climbing down we went towards Bhoothnath group of temples. Situated at the end of the 360 view, the temple at the end of water body makes you remember the ancient temples with lake in front. Some movies has this type of serene temples making your soul calm.
The Bhootnath temple consists of many other small temples. One secret spot was shown by a local, who helped to see an another treasure of Badami. A cave was there, where we had to crawl to go inside a space big enough to accommodate 20 peoples. Inside the cave, statue of Gautam Buddha was there. A streak of light was hi-lightening the face of Buddha.
Coming to the end...
Badami gave me an impressive historic experience. It took back me to ancient golden India when kings and their kingdom flourished. The rich history and a huge place like this makes you lost in time and wonder how they lived their life....
Many moments and pictures remained to be shared. The entire trip was just refreshing inspite of blazing sun and high temperature. We combated the sun and completed the entire trip and went back with evergreen memories.
