After a slight debacle with a cash machine in a near by village we returned to Hampi ready for the day. We headed down to the Sacred Ghats and caught a motorised boat at the crossing there, less scenic than the coracle but also less expensive. On the other bank I hired us a moped and we headed toward Anjeyanadri Hill, believed to the birthplace of Lord Hanuman. Shell quickly dubbed the bike The Colostomiser, it was a rickety, rusty old thing that lurched to the right of its as though possessed. The state of the roads didn’t help either, especially as there was no suspension, the ride was more like a beating specifically for our bottoms and genitals. I expected the thing to fall apart underneath us at any moment and I prayed to the Gods that nothing pulled out suddenly in front of us as the brakes we almost none existent, something I neglected to tell Shell.

Luckily we got to the foot of the hill in one piece, purchased some bananas in the dusty car park there and started our ascent up the zig-zagging white stairs. Very soon we were drenched in sweat as the mid-day sun beat down on us making us wish we had gotten there earlier in the morning. It wasn’t long, either, till the macaques started to gather expectantly around us. A large, rather brazen male sat in the middle of the stairs and fixed us with demanding eyes. We edged past and he followed us on the edge of the stairs until some others climbing the path took his fancy.

After some huffing and puffing we reached the top, all sweaty and panting. The temple itself was not overwhelming, inside it rang and thumped while the Vedas were recited, pilgrims bowed before idols in praise. What really struck me was the view, before us was a vast landscape, doted with brown-gold rocks beyond reckoning, even the hill we’d just climbed looked like it was made of several enormous boulders just stacked haphazardly on top of each other. Out from the sun baked rocks called banana plantations and fields of crops, a vibrant green as the cobalt river snaked its way through the land. We sat around for a while, feeding the macaques and watching their habits before starting down again.

We rode around trying to find a route to Cesare’s shrine, eventually we were pointed down dirt road which ended in a ford. Leaving the moped I splashed my face in the river to cool off while buffalo and white robbed pilgrims passed by. As we crossed I noticed the ford itself had been made using discarded blocks from temple ruins. It was great crossing history like that and I daydreamed about where they may once have stood and how they had come to lie there. The whole place was like that, it whispered with a promise; a promise that every rock, temple and discarded block had a story to tell. I would gladly hear every one of them. I thought back to Elephanta Island where we’d seen the sculpture of the Triumti. Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. Birth, life and death, the three cosmic functions deified, each function existing for and because of the other. The very machinery of the cosmos which binds all things in a cycle of deaths and renweals, here I was walking across it. Watching as the crystal waters flowed over those old blocks it was so very clear to me then. That which is made fades, crumbles and through it’s own destruction is made a new, not as it was but something else. As the water refreshed my feet it was with a thrill I realised I was wading in the very nature things.