Hampi

Ancient SitesKarnataka,India

The remains of a south Indian city once the second-largest on Earth, sacked in 1565 and never rebuilt, scattered through 42 square kilometres of boulders.

September·Edge of season

Jun–Sep

The southwest monsoon breaks the heat and turns the paddy and banana terraces along the Tungabhadra green. By August and September the swollen river and the dam releases rise over the lowest ruins. Skies stay overcast and the boulders turn slippery underfoot.

Year-round The boulder field and its 1,600-odd ruins stand here every day of the year. What the year moves is the rest: the monsoon flood and green, and the swing from cool winter to punishing April–May heat.

Hampi is what is left of Vijayanagara, and the size of it takes a while to register. Around 1500 this was the second-largest city on Earth after Beijing, with perhaps half a million people in it. Domingo Paes, a Portuguese trader who arrived in 1520, put it at the size of Rome and called it the best-provided city in the world. In 1565 the armies of the Deccan sultanates broke the empire at Talikota, looters worked through the palaces and temples for months afterwards, and nobody came back to rebuild. What you walk through is the city nobody cleared away: more than 1,600 remains — temples, bazaars, water tanks, gateways, elephant stables — spread across 42 square kilometres of granite boulders. You do not tour it so much as keep finding it: a colonnade in one hollow, a gateway standing in a banana field. Climb Matanga Hill towards sunset and the whole city lies below you, the rock and the river and the temple towers going copper, then rose. Down in the Vittala complex stands the stone chariot that India prints on its fifty-rupee note, beside a hall of slender columns cut to ring like struck metal. The riverside Virupaksha temple has never closed. Worship has run there since the seventh century, straight through the sacking, and at dawn drums and incense still fill the courtyard while macaques patrol the parapets. The year moves the place too: from June the monsoon greens the paddy and banana terraces along the Tungabhadra and lifts the water over Hampi's lowest ruins, while by March the granite turns punishing at midday.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Start up Matanga Hill well before sunset — the route is a rough scramble between boulders rather than a path, and nothing is lit on the way down, so carry a torch.
Reach the Vittala temple at opening — the coaches come over from Hospet after breakfast, and the chariot courtyard is small enough to feel full once they arrive.
Keep food and bottles out of sight — the macaques along the Hemakuta and Virupaksha parapets are practised thieves and will take an open bag straight out of your hand.

Things to do

1
Climb Matanga Hill for the last light
The scramble up from the old bazaar takes roughly half an hour and ends at a small shrine on the summit. From up there the granite, the Tungabhadra and the scattered temple towers all catch the low sun at once — the only vantage point that gathers the whole city into a single view.
2
Stand at the stone chariot in the Vittala courtyard
The chariot sits at the heart of the empire's finest stonework: a Garuda shrine mounted on granite wheels, facing a hall whose slender columns were cut to ring at different pitches when struck. They are roped off now, cracked by decades of tapping, but the carving around them — musicians, horses, dancers — still rewards a slow circuit.
3
Catch the dawn puja at Virupaksha
Arrive at first light and the riverside temple is working rather than performing: drums, bells, incense, and pilgrims moving under a nine-tiered gopuram. Worship has continued here without a break since the seventh century, which makes this the one corner of Hampi that never became a ruin.
4
Cross the royal centre to the elephant stables
The kings' quarter is a different Hampi: open ground, stepped tanks, and eleven domed chambers built to house the state elephants, their arches borrowing straight from the Deccan sultanates the empire fought. The Lotus Mahal beside them shows the same blend of Hindu and Islamic lines.
5
Ride the boulder roads between the temples
Hire a bicycle or scooter and follow the narrow lanes that thread between granite blocks the size of houses, past banana plantations and half-buried shrines. Covering the ground at your own pace, with stops nobody planned for you, is how most of Hampi's ruins are actually found.
6
Cross the Tungabhadra in a coracle
The round basket boats that ferry people to the far bank spin as they go, and from water level the temples rise above you exactly as they did for the empire's pilgrims. The crossing pauses when the monsoon river runs hard, so ask at the bank before counting on it.
7
Boulder on the granite the city was cut from
Hampi's granite is rated among the best climbing rock in India, and hundreds of boulder problems have been logged on the blocks scattered through the valley and across the Tungabhadra. The cool dry months are the climbing season, for the same reason they suit walking the ruins. Climbers work the free-standing boulders, not anything the Vijayanagara masons cut.