A Weekend Getaway to the Temple Town – Hampi

It was the Eid Long weekend while we were in Goa in July 2016. With monsoon in Goa it was perfect time for a road drive. We had two options in mind Mahabaleshwar and Hampi, and we were glad we chose Hampi! It was around 350 KM drive from our home in Dona Paula, Goa. You can check the details about Hampi if you are planning a trip over here.

Achyutaraya Temple

So we started the journey at about 1:30 PM and reached Hampi around 9 in the evening. The town had slept by the time we reached there, but there were a couple of locals to help people who arrive late with accommodation. We checked into a home-stay which was pretty reasonable (INR 500/night) and clean and stepped out immediately to eat. We could find one restaurant that was about to close and went there, the dinner was extremely bad and half cooked, but we were hungry and it was food so we ate it. Then we roamed around a bit, went near the Virupaksha Temple complex and then returned to our room as there was hardly anyone in the lanes.

Virupaksha Temple

We hoped we would have left earlier because the route was captivating and if we had more hours at hand we would have stopped at multiple locations. There were vast planes, Windmills, and straight roads with to twists and turns for many KMs with fields on both sides. It surely was a drive which you can do even if you do not intend to stay at Hampi and just want to experience mesmerizing feeling of the roads and nature around.

Road on the way to Hampi

Coming back to our stay, the next morning was beautiful, slight sunlight with cool breeze made it a perfect day for outdoors. We went to the Virupaksha Temple and then took a local sightseeing tour where an auto rickshaw driver took us to all the tourist locations of Hampi Vithala Temple Complex, Matanga Hill, Virupaksha Temple, Sasivekalu Ganesha Temple, Statue of Ugra Narsimha and a few other places.

Path To A Hill Top

There are two major ways to explore Hampi either take an auto rickshaw that will take you to all the places or hire a cycle and take a group tour with one of the cycle groups. Driving around in your vehicle is also possible but you will have to break and park at every half a kilometers, hence it’s not a good idea.

Settlement In Hampi From Top

Other Side From The Top

2 things we missed were:

Coracle boat ride because it was not the season and there were no rides.

Daroji Sloth Bear Sanctuary, this is where not planning the trip beforehand became a problem. The bears are spotted mostly after 4 PM. We had spent first day in sightseeing and had no time to go to the sanctuary. On the next day we could not afford to stay till that late or we would have to take another days leave so a little planning would have not hurt.

Windmills On the way to Hampi

All in all the place has a relaxing vibe. It is surrounded by Tungabhadra River on one side and small hills on the other three and has cool breeze blowing all the time. Also it is a UNESCO world heritage site.