hampi

June 30, 2007

We traveled to Hampi today. Hampi is a town that has the last major empire in the South. It was a beautiful day and it was an amazing place. The Dravidian architecture was so detailed and so unique.

Here are some pictures:

One of the temple pillars on the left, Vittala palace on the right

We went to several different parts and then decided to have a quick lunch before heading to the last location, Vittala's Palace. We stopped at another "hotel" that literally frightened me. The sink had no running water, so we washed our hands with water that was meant for customers' drinking needs.

Vittala Palace was built I believe around 400 or 500 years ago, by the last series of reigning kings in South India. (I will update this with history, at the moment I really do not recall!) After looking around and taking pictures, a young boy approached Doug and asked him if he wanted a guided tour of Vittala Palace. We agreed to take a tour, for a price of 50 rupees. The boy led us around, shared some facts about the famed chariot that sits in the middle, the palace architecture and the musical pillars. (It is said that one can actually "play" the different pillars and that during the time it was built, dancers were commissioned to dance to the music played on the towers.)He showed us another part of the palace where pillars did still make music. (People are no longer allowed to use the pillars because the reverberations weaken the building.)

Then, he for some reason, shooed the others in our group away (we had gone with the couple who does the cooking at the cantene here on the Myrada campus and Rafi, one of the Myrada drivers.) He mumbled something in Kannada and decided to take us to the last part of the tour. He began by posing a question "why are so many poses in the kama sutra at the temple?" I had to bite my lip not to laugh outright. He continued, "You see, we don't have sex education in this country, not even in this day and age and so thats why parents would tell their children to go to the temple after marriage." "At the temple," he enlightened us, "they would see all of these kama sutra poses and think hmmm what is that?" He then went off in a direction that made me laugh uncontrollably for fifteen minutes, I just could not help myself, it was the funniest thing I had ever heard in a long time, told to me in a very interesting English. He pondered, "What would a man do if his wife did not want to have s*x?" He responded, "He needs to make her feel nice." He gestured to a carving on one side of the wall, that indicated just that. I couldn't believe it, I had never really looked at a temple in that way, and then there was this 20 year old man, who did not know anything about anything animatedly telling us about the kama sutra. I cannot fully recount everything he said here, because it does go into some unnecessary detail, ending in some knowledge about how monkeys conduct themselves. (See me for the complete story when I get back in late August.) .... I really wish I had turned on my digital voice recorder. It was so funny, and the fact that this boy was speaking in this accent, made it all the funnier, especially when he kept using the phrase "pregnancy positive." Except it came out more like "prug nooon ceee po zeezz tivvv." .

(Frampi/Joe - you guys would have really thought this was funny...I am being presumptuous and assuming you both are excitedly reading each bit of my blog hehee.)

I really did laugh though :) ....

ps. I suspect that non-western tourists don't get the "kama sutra" section of the tour... just a thought