Hampi - A Story in Stone

The first thing that strikes you about the place is its terrain - towering boulders the size of two elephants stacked on top of each other and the same across, strewn carelessly on hills as if sprayed on this sleepy town in a casual hand wave. There is enough to feast your eyes on – the architecture, the dancing figures, the bold hunters, the mythical creatures and statue upon statue of sheer excellence carved out of a single rock. If you let yourself, you can almost hear the sounds of thundering chariots, booming temple bells and the musical anklets of dancers entertaining a royal audience. 

Then why numbing of the soul, you may ask? Because I was doing it all wrong! In a hurry to add everything that this place had to offer on my ‘Have Seen’ list, I hardly allowed myself a moment of imagination. My perception of the miraculous imagery in stone was just surface. There were fleeting moments of quiet and solitude that let a massive structure silence me to the very core and dwarf any delusions I had of my technologically superior society, but I couldn’t sustain any outer body experiences I thought I was having. I felt like that ill fated snake who kept biting its own tail in the mobile game.