Hampi 2011: Last Chance to See?

Someone is sweeping the dirt road and uneven stone slabs outside my window, one floor below. There’s a lawnmower rev of a rickshaw, a buzzer-like horn. A cow bellows a complaint. Pooja bells tinkle, the low drone of repeated mantras emerges from the Brahmin house next door. Children shout, mother calls back. A monkey screeches at another in the tree beside the guesthouse.

The day is well underway, I should join it.

I pull on some comfy clothes and head to the roof in the half-light for my self-directed yoga session. I’m early enough during this solstice period to greet the rising red ball of fire with my sun salutations as it just peeks over Matanga Hill.

Yoga done, I can still make it to the river in time to see Lakshmi the temple elephant being bathed, to the delight of several clicking tourist cameras. The ghats by the river are very busy these days, with many Indian tourists, pilgrims and school children here for their winter holidays. They sleep in the temple, mantapas or their school bus and go to the river, toothbrush and soap in hand, to do their morning ablutions en masse.

After breakfast at a rooftop restaurant with a front row view of the imposing Virupaksha temple gopura, I can spend the day wandering the ruin-strewn surroundings, with its massive rounded boulders and myriad caves that house ad hoc temples or sadhus that have renounced the world to live out their lives in meditation. Or I can sit in a shaded restaurant and read the newspapers or my book, do a bit of writing, manage my photos. I may see the sun out for the day on Hemakuta Hill, just one more time.

I can spend, and have spent, a lot of time in Hampi. It’s my favourite place in the world in which to do virtually nothing, for those times in life when nothing is what you need to do.

Yet this time, I know it may be my last, at least in this form; all of this is coloured with a tinge of sadness.

Hampi is unique in my experience of India. This tiny colony took root in the ruins of the long-abandoned capital of the Vijayanagara empire. Dead since the 16th century, the current incarnation started about 60-70 years ago to service the pilgrims that still come to Virupaksha temple on the banks of the holy Tungabhadra River. When Western tourists discovered Hampi 30 years later, more merchants and service providers came with them.

So Hampi is almost purpose-built to serve travellers. Like many towns in this category, you’re never more than 20 feet from a banana pancake should the need arise. But as it’s also the centre of an archaeologically significant UNESCO World Heritage Site (listed in 1986), it attracts a broad range of tourists that go well beyond the hippies looking for a change of scene from Goan beaches (and who prefer to stay across the river in Virupapur Gadde where they can get alcohol and meat).

But unlike other fixtures in the travellers’ itinerary, the pilgrimage trade and the “holy” nature of this place has maintained its primacy over the Western tourist aspect. This is a temple town first and foremost, which gives it an authenticity lacking in most other tourist enclaves. It’s a roll-up-the-sidewalks, if there were any, at 9pm kind of place.

And there’s another check on development that’s kept Hampi true to its “Indian village” vibe: it’s not really supposed to be here.

When the original chai makers, coconut sellers, and dhabas first opened here they set up shop in the ruins of the old colonnaded bazaar in front of the temple, or mantapas. Over the decades those squats became more permanent in nature, adding walls, second floors, extensions on the front. Building materials evolved from bamboo and palm fronds to cement, bricks and mortar. In the area between the bazaar and temple down to the river, a rabbit warren of twisty dirt roads filled in with small guesthouses, to which second stories were later added, then rooftop restaurants with fabulous views of the temple and the river.

Little of this was officially sanctioned, but neither was it stopped. A few families have managed to secure some ownership rights in some of the plots, and even fewer have licenses to run the businesses they do. Yet run them, they do.

Government itself added some aspects of legitimacy to the colony of ‘squatters’: a post office was set up right next to the temple. A police station operates out of the mantapas (walls added). Local children go to a local school.

But despite this veneer of a ‘real town’, the local shopkeepers and guesthouse operators live with the knowledge that a knock on the door could come at any time that would shut them down overnight. This was especially apparent since UNESCO and Indian authorities embarked on a master planning process in 2003, with very little input sought from local residents. Their fate was further sealed by a successful court case filed by several local religious leaders in 2009 calling for the removal of all tourist-related guesthouses and restaurants within Hampi and Virupapur Gadde largely due to the ‘moral pollution’ of the sacred site by foreign tourists.

Consequently, investments in upgrades to buildings, infrastructure, and even décor all have an air of ‘slap-dashness’, of temporary fixes, giving the whole colony a ramshackle kind of feel.

That knock on the door came late in the evening of July 28, 2011, for the shopkeepers in the bazaar mantapas. An official letter hand-delivered informed them that bulldozers would arrive at 7am the next morning to remove all “encroachments” on the mantapas. In a little over six hours of destruction with heavy machinery more than 150 families’ businesses and homes were largely destroyed.

This move was supposedly a first step towards compliance with a recently completed master plan for the site. Under the plan, all “encroachments” on the ruins are to be removed, as are all structures built within 100 metres of any ruins. It’s almost impossible to find anywhere in Hampi that’s 100 metres from a ruin. That’s part of its charm. But the plan seems to be to clear out most of the recent structures and remove all commercial activity from what is currently the Hampi colony. They want to take a living, thriving Indian village and turn it into a dead museum.

While UNESCO was heavily involved in the development of the master plan, it has said nothing about the manner in which the plan is being implemented, there’s been no statement from them at all. That there even was a finalized plan seems to have been a surprise to Hampi residents, who only found it on the internet after the demolition. In that plan, a site was identified in neighbouring Prakash Nagar for relocation of those displaced, but that site hasn’t yet been purchased. Government officials are currently proposing to move people to a different site, farther away, that government already holds. Hampi people don’t want to move there as it’s too far away, and is currently used as a cemetery. Meanwhile, the next round of demolition is scheduled for sometime in January, for the back of the mantapas already cleared on the front, bringing the number of displaced families to more than 300. [See the note I’ve posted on the Save Hampi People Facebook page (Dec. 28, 2011) for more details on how the relocation is unfolding.]

Longer term, it’s not clear what the real plan is for Hampi, despite the existence of the master plan. At best, it looks like a museum, with opportunities for pilgrims to still stay in the temple, adjacent mantapas and guesthouses specifically (and exclusively) for pilgrims.

For other tourists, especially foreign ones, it appears that any commercial areas will be outside the ‘museum’. Celebration of festivals and other aspects of Indian life would retreat into residential neighbourhoods. Tourist accommodation might sprout a few kilometres from the site, or be banished to the charmless city of Hospet 15km/30 minutes away. Three new high-end hotels have opened in Hospet in the past year alone, in a city that certainly doesn’t warrant high-end tourist accommodation on its own merits. More are under construction between Hospet and Hampi. It appears that somehow some knew well in advance that the hammer was finally going to be dropped on Hampi.

At worst, my fear is that various big-money tourism interests are already circling Hampi like vultures. Once the ‘cleansing’ is complete, these interests will snap up high-cost concessions to provide services inside the museum site – food, guiding, transportation, etc. Those people currently running family-owned businesses here will become bus boys, drivers and chambermaids at surrounding hotels. Any sense of a bustling Indian temple town will be lost to an over-packaged, over-priced, sanitized version of its former self.

Is this four months away? Four years? Who knows – any kind of reliable, transparent information on the situation is impossible to come by, for locals as well as tourists.

Change isn’t always a bad thing, of course, and there’s a lot about the current situation in Hampi that could be improved to make life better for the people who live here, for those who worship here, and for those that want to photograph it all. I’m sure there’s even a whole category of tourists out there that might prefer the version of Hampi that’s going to emerge from the chaos of this destruction - just not me, or the others that tend to return to Hampi over and over again. But the way in which this change is being imposed on the people of Hampi doesn’t indicate an intention to make life better for those who currently have a stake in the colony. It’s unlikely that no one will profit from these changes, of course, just not the people who have been here for generations.

I’m glad I’ve had a chance to be here now, to see it one more time in (almost) the way I’ve come to know it, just in case the timeline is closer to four months rather than four years. But it makes me immensely sad to see people struggling with the uncertainty they face, and with the loss of what has been for some their home for generations. And it makes it hard to leave: I’m in India until the end of January, and had intentions to do something next month – a meditation retreat, or yoga, or just lie on a beach for some of it – but I’ve not been inspired yet to sort out what that may be.

And for any of you that are planning travels to India in the near future, I urge you to put Hampi on your itinerary, and for long enough to really soak it up, to get to know it as it is now, more than just a quick tour around the ruins.

Because you’re not likely to get the chance to do that ‘someday’ when you come back.

[If you want to follow what’s happening with the relocations of residents and with future changes, “like” the Facebook page “Save Hampi People”. It’s not clear right now what pressure from foreign tourists could achieve, or even what they should ask for at this point (beyond “stop! Make it stop!”), but if clarity does emerge it will likely be posted on that page. Also, check out my first Indian media hit on this issue!]

Comments

[Patrick]

I say if it's not broke don't try and fix it. Is a sad story, but thank you for sharing it.

Brenda and I are finishing up our third week in and around Oaxaca, headed home this weekend.

So great to hear from you and all the best for the New year.

Patrick

[Charlotte Tarrant]

great to read this and see how much you care about the people in Hampi. Whatever the legalities of this situation, like you I am saddened to see a community in fear. Let's keep spreading the word.

[kimberly]

I am so happy to have found your blog, as I traveled through the north last year, turned 40 in Udaipur, and fell in love with the country. Hampi is next on my list, and it saddens me that it may not be the way I envision it when I am able to go. I look forward to reading back through old posts~
Enjoy that incredible place,
K.