Hampi

Hampi

I have been having flashbacks to my time travelling ('the good old days'). While I am doing something mundane WHAM, a memory creeps up on me, playing in my head as clearly as if I was right there in the moment.  I can't control it and it has no relation to what I am doing at the time. 

Is this how someone feels who dropped too much acid in the past?

Then yesterday my friend started talking about deja vu.

In a flash I saw the small town of Hampi in my minds eye.  This magical place lies about 9 hours west of Goa, in the heartland of India.  For once there is no mystery behind my sudden memory - it is where I experienced my one and only true case of deja vu.    

Hampi:  a small town predating and outlasting Vijayanagara, the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire which was desecrated by the Deccan Muslim’s in 1565.  Now only an eclectic scattering of ruins from this ancient capital remain, but on a landscape so incredible that there is beauty at every turn.  Beneath bright sunlight and a dazzling blue sky lie huge, naturally spherical boulders and colourfully striped rock; it feels like wandering around an episode of The Flintstones.

This archaeological area is huge.  From the tenacious, grassy banks of the glittering Tungabhadra River it stretches far into the arid Indian countryside beyond. 

Hampi only covers one small area of the whole historical site, by the water's edge with the towering Virupaksha Temple as it's focal point.  It has low, pastel-coloured buildings, lassiwalas galore and winding streets where one is as likely to bump into a placid bull as a tourist-laden rickshaw.

Some ruins are gotten to by way of Hampi Bazaare, the site of an ancient market place and there is still a lot happening there today.  It runs from the town's almost-Aztec styled centre-piece (the Virupaksha Temple) to Matanga Hill which is scattered with numerous sculptures and pavilions that would not look out of place in Greece.  

Children playing cricket in front of Matanga Hill (Hampi Bazaare)

Pavilions on Hampi Bazaare

It was here that I had my first and only real experience of deja vu.

Looking down from town to the end of the Bazaare, with vendors calling from the shops on either side and kids obliviously playing cricket, the ruins and rubble were red silhouettes against the waning sun in the distance.  More than just familiar – this place was known to me.

I had heard of Hampi while living in Australia a year before.  The Yorkshire Pudding and I had visited Melbourne museum which, in that freaky coincidence known as fate, had an exhibition on Hampi.  At that time I had not even heard of Hampi, let alone known that I would travel there, but the exhibition was captivating.  

Hampi

It included a virtual-reality room where I donned a headset and actually walked around different sections of the ruins without ever leaving Australia. 

I had been spellbound by the exhibit but had forgotten about the scene until I met it again, face to face.  My brain had already been where my body was yet to follow.

Back in Hampi proper, even the woman walking in front carrying a basket on her head seemed familiar.  The smell of cow dung and hot pakora wrapped around me in the stifling, pre-monsoon air.  I still remember the comforting ambiance of the place: it seemed so familiar despite the landscape remaining exquisitely foreign. 

And surrounded by the cold Scottish winter, I welcome the warm memory it brings.