An incomplete trip (Part 1)

I had taken off the entire last week to go on a trip to North Karnataka. I had planned to visit Chitradurga, Hampi, Bijapur, Badami, Aihole, Pattadakal, Hubli and so on.

We set out on 29th Sep to my first destination, Chitradurga. The road to Chitradurga from Bangalore (NH4) is excellent and I could drive at more than 100kmph most of the time. A very pleasant cloudy weather welcomed us at Chitradurga fort. The fort is in a very good condition considering the battles it has withstood centuries ago. Fort walls are mostly intact and the ASI has done a good job of preserving it. Seeing the fort was not an easy task though... carrying a 2 year old around is not very easy.

One interesting aspect of visiting Chitradurga fort now-a-days is watching Jyoti Raju scale the walls of the fort with utmost ease. He has now become famous enough to appear in all news papers and magazines. Here is a video of him I captured.



By noon it was raining cats and dogs in Chitradurga, so we decided to proceed towards my next destination, Hospet. The road from Chitradurga to Hospet (NH13) is in a deplorable condition most of the way. The road has a heavy traffic of trucks from the mid and North India heading towards Bangalore. The 2-lane road is filled with potholes and when it rains it is hard to say how deep a pothole is. Generous scraping of car's under belly resulted.

The next day I woke up to realize that the rains that began last afternoon had not yet stopped. The town of Hospet, while not very nice to tread on in the best of weather, was a terrible slushy mess during rains. My plans of watching Hampi was under serious threat now. The cozy confines of my room in Malligi hotel was tempting me to just curl up in my blankets and sleep off. However, having travelled all this long I was going to ensure I get my money's worth. Armed with umbrellas we set out to see Hampi.