This article was originally published on medium.com by Nabendu Biswas

The day 2 of our hampi vacation started by reaching Virupaksha temple by our auto.



This temple is a large complex which is in very good shape. Also the temple is functional, which is not the case with most of the temples in hampi.

The temple contains beautiful sculptures all over it and is very scenic. We spend close to 2 hours here to check everything.

The two famous ganesha temples of hampi are also located nearby. They are Kadlekalu Ganesha and Sasivekalu Ganesha.

After that we saw the giant monolith bull temple. It is the temple of lord Shiva beloved bull Nandi.

After that we visited some small but beautiful and well maintained temples on the way to zanana enclosure. We visited Krishna temple first.



After that we visited two temples which were next to each other. First one is badaviling temple, which had a large 3 meter high shiv ling.

Next to badaviling temple, is a very iconic temple of hampi. The famous laxmi narshmiha temple, which has the magnificent idol of the fourth avatar of Vishnu.



Then we visited the small, but we’ll maintained Chandikeswara temple.

After that the temple of underground Shiva, which have staircase to go down and see lord shiva.

After that we headed over to Zanana enclosure. It is also a large campus and contains two magnificent structures — lotus Mahal and elephant stables.

First we visited lotus Mahal, which we can only see from the outside. As tourists are not allowed to go inside.



As the name suggests the elephant stables were the places where the king’s elephants were kept.

It contained around 10 rooms for elephants.

There is a sort of museum near elephant stables, which had many statues from vijaynagara period. My son enjoyed clicking his pictures with these statues.



We visited Ranga temple after that, which was nearby Zanana enclosure. The temple is all ruins, but had a beautiful lord Hanuman statue.

Then we visited one of the top three places in hampi. It is one of the most iconic and well preserved place after virupaksha temple. It is known as Hazararama temple. It contains beautiful sculptures from our holy text of Ramayana.

After that we visited King’s audience hall which also contains the magnificent Mahanavami Dibba. This was the place where the king used to had discussions with his ministers and also address the large public audience.

Next we visited the queen’s bath, which as the name suggests was a place where the queens used to bath.

We were very hungry and had our lunch at a place called Garden view, where our auto driver took us.

After that we headed over to the third iconic place of hampi is Vitthala temple. This place is a bit far for all the other places in hampi and took a half hour drive by auto.

We need to walk for 1 km from the main entrance because fossil fuel vehicles are not allowed. Only bicycles and the state run battery vehicles are allowed.

The Vitthala temple from outside seems to be ruins.

But once you go inside you can see different temples which are greatly preserved by our government. Lot of restoration work is still going on.

The Vitthala temple also contains the iconic stone chariot, which is also printed on our 50 rupees note.

While coming back to the entrance, we also visited a quite lake which had a temple inside it.

In one day we visited almost all of Hampi iconic and other place. I must say the government and UNESCO did an excellent job in preserving our heritage.

These are the structures which will live, even if we don’t become a space civilization and fail like our earlier civilizations — Harappa, Egyptian etc.