Progress in Old Panjim

Most of the old Portuguese buildings in old Panjim have the same sort of businesses and homes that fill the rest of the city. Tailors, offices, tiny general stores, cheap thali restaurants, and sellers of rubber stamps, shoes, housewares and tourist trinkets.

But a few of the buildings have hip new boutiques and art galleries -- with a focus on young Indian designers.

Mother May I?
Maggie doesn't get the outfit she wanted (at least not for the next few years).
Check out those cool light fixtures.


The forward-thinking family who runs the Panjim Inn (and its' high design cousin The Panjim Peoples) obviously have a great sense of how important it is to save this old Portuguese neighborhood. Here they are building a new structure in the old style. It will be a new 15-room inn around the corner from their other properties.

Old and New Panjim

We took a walk in the Latin quarter of Panjim, where the old Portuguese architecture still stands. This area is called Fontainhaus.


A tiny lane in Panjim, every house a different color.


Chapel with motorcycles.


Can you see the wooden dutch door swung open?


Then we walked the few blocks back to our hotel in the modern section of Panjim.


Typical Panjim street scene.



Karma swears that she is not running a sauce business on the side, but we are getting suspicious.

Happy in Hampi

Today, we visit the ruins at Hampi. Maggie has a narrative about our exploration below, but first, here's a summary of why Hampi is an interesting place:

About Hampi

From the mid 1300's to the mid 1500's, all of South India, at various points, was controlled by the Vijayanagar empire. It was started by two brothers with ambitious plans -- they built a giant capital city at Hampi, partly because the boulder-strewn landscape made it easy to defend and build their defenses. Yet their architecture was not just military....they built beautiful temples, monuments and palaces. At the peak of the empire, in the early 1500's, the king named Krishnadevaraya was known throughout the trading world as a cosmopolitan lover of art, and he was famous for showering jewels on playwrights and poets, as well as being a writer himself. Like the high middle ages in Europe, people traveled from all over the world to Hampi, and often wrote about their experiences at court, leaving a very interesting trail of information about this "forgotten empire".

But, in the 1560's, the Deccan sultanate, from central India, was successful in destroying the Vijayanagar capital at Hampi and leaving it in ruins. Many of the buildings were made of sandalwood over stone foundations, and these are completely gone, but others were carved from giant boulders and were harder to destroy. These ruins are now a World Heritage site, though it looks like it needs a lot more protection, as vendors and graffiti compete with a stunning archeological resource.

Maggie writes:

With so many rocks Hampi is perfect for building things out of stone. And so it is the ancient capital of the great Vijayanagar empire, an empire which once stretched from Hampi to the southern tip of India. We went to the ancient ruins of the old capital, crossing the Tungabhadra River.


Here's how you get to Hampi. 10 rupees (25 cents) per person, and they laugh really hard if you fall while climbing in.


The first building we went to was a temple, the second largest tower (gopuram) in south India. The temple was dedicated to Pampa, an incarnation of the goddess Parvati, Shiva's wife and Pampapotti, her consort who is Shiva. Hampi is also the home of the great Hindu god Hanuman. Hanuman is the monkey god and supposedly Hampi was once part of the Monkey country, and true to its name is densely populated with monkeys. Hanuman is most famous for his part in the Ramayana as one of Rama's best friends and supporters. Also at the temple we were blessed by the resident holy elephant, this consists of being softly bonked on the head by the elephant after handing him a coin. This often leaves the blessed person smelling like elephant.


Kobi helps Jen get blessed. First you put a one-rupee coin in the elephant's trunk. Then you bow and the elephant bops you gently on the head.


In front of every temple is a giant yard lined with stone bays for the bazaar, and part of this area is filled with souvenir vendors...though they are soon to be relocated to a mall-like visitor center now under construction.


We visit a temple of Ganesh. Ganesh has the head of an elephant and the body of a man. He is much loved and is prayed to every time someone starts something because he is the remover of obstacles. This temple has one of the largest Ganesh statues in India. Ganesh is also a witty trickster.


Because it is damaged, this statue of Ganesh is not supposed to be used as an idol anymore.


Maggie pats Ganesh on his pot belly, which has to be so big because he has to swallow the whole world.


Next we went to a Vishnu temple that had a huge statue of him and his wife Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and beauty. Or rather, it would have been a statue of Lakshmi if the Deccan (from the center of India ) Sultanate hadn't, in 1565, defeated the Vijayanagar empire.(only with the help of the Portuguese rifles or so I'm told by Tenzin) Only Lackshmi's arm remains. An odd fact is that Lackshmi's symbol is the boar, an animal that is now considered revolting it is also the symbol of the Norse goddess Fraya who is also a goddess of weath and beauty. Its strange that two civilizations so far away could almost have the same goddess except with different names.


Here's a statue of Vishnu in his man-lion incarnation.

It's a really big statue.


We come to a complex of temples, where Tenzin is treated like a superstar by a group of schoolboys. They see him again later in the day and cheer!


After visiting the Vishnu Statue we went to a different area which seemed to be the main non religious site. It consisted of a music hall a meditation hall, a huge chariot sculpture, and several other buildings. The music hall is amazing. Not only is it a beautiful building and extremely ornate it is incredibly amazing in terms of what it does. On some of the pillars there are sculpted people who are holding drums if you tap the drums while putting your ear to one of the pillars that adorn the larger pillar you can hear the noise of a drum. This experience is mind boggling because the pillar is about a foot away and the sound has to travel through a tunnel to get to the pillar yet it sounds very clear and loud. Also this tunnel would have been extremely hard to make. Other pillars make the sounds of string instruments and different bells as you tap each one. One set of pillars makes the sound of the Indian music scales (ragas), sa, re, ga, ma, pa, da, ni, sa. (You can see bit of our video of this by going to this link, Musical Pillars at Hampi)


This whole temple is a giant musical instrument -- each narrow column is tuned to a different pitch and there are clever and fascinating ways to play it...we thought of Scott Kessel when we were here!


Within the temple was this carving of Vishnu, representing the myth where he grants the wish of a man who doesn't want to be killed in the night or day, by man or by beast. So Vishnu does him in at dusk in a part-beast/part-man incarnation.



The Chariot is huge and ornately carved the wheels are my favorite part as there design is beautiful. Inside the Chariot resides a deity and the Chariot itself is pulled by two stone elephants.





After that we went to a Ramayana temple. This was a really amazing temple because it illustrated the entire story of the Ramayana, not just in one scene which is what usually happens, but in hundreds of little scenes on the inside and the outside of the temple. The story of the Ramayana goes something like this. There is a prince named Rama and he has four brothers. Rama is kind and courageous and a reincarnation of Vishnu. He is exiled into the forest for 14 years by his evil stepmother, because she wanted her son to inherit the throne instead of Rama, who was the rightful heir. His wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana come with him. One day, an evil ten headed demon named Ravana comes and steals Sita and brings her back to his kingdom, Sri Lanka. Rama is heart broken and he and Lakshmana try to find Sita, but they can't. They meet the monkey god, named Hanuman, who joins them. After many adventures, they finally beat Ravana and rescue Sita, and Rama is returned to his throne.


Described by our guide as a stone comic book, it begins in the bottom right here, before Rama's birth, with his father, the King, longing to have an heir, and next, shown with his three wives.


For lunch we went to a restaurant called to the Mango Tree which was in a banana tree forest. The view from there was beautiful.


We stop at a shady outdoor restaurant under a giant mango tree (where, to Karma's delight, we find a copy of the third Harry Potter...just what she's been looking for). Kobi swings while Tenzin pushes.


Walking back from the restaurant, we get a lesson in how bananas are grown. First off, they need a lot of water, and trenches run through the rows. Here's Karma under the banana trees.


Here's what baby bananas look like....it takes about 8 months for one bunch of bananas to grow on one tree, and a tree can last for several years.


After lunch we leave the sacred site for the royal area...this is the Queen's summer palace.


The Queen's Summer Palace has beautiful carvings in mortar. See the ducks?


Krishnadevaraya had these Elephant Stables for his 11 royal elephants...and there is a tiny version of this building to one side, with 11 chambers for the mahouts (elephant attendants).


The last thing we went to was the Queen's Bath, which was more like an ornate swimming pool, surrounded by balconies. Something I’ve noticed after visiting the Roman Baths in England and after reading about Eastern cultures, is that the public bath was an important part of their society. The Queen's Bath at Hampi was very beautiful, but sadly covered in graffiti.

Finally, we come to the Queen's Bath. Karma and Maggie are standing in the bottom of the empty pool.


While waiting for the return boat home, Tenzin communes with nature. He's reading a book on Tenali Raman, a comic poet and wit in the court of Krishnadevaraya.


Considering all the important historical artifacts and landmarks, I'm surprised that Hampi is not better kept and more visited. Then again, it is not so easy to access.

Hampi shows great examples of Vijayanagar architecture and really portrays an interesting portrait of what life was like back in that age.


End of the day, we drive through the rice paddies near our hotel.

Let's go to Hampi!

It's been a running joke on this trip that even though we are traveling all over the country seeing so many interesting things, Jen is still complaining because we can't go to Hampi (the 500-year-old ruins of an ancient empire). We could have gone from Hyderabad, or Bangalore, or Goa....since it is equidistant from all three, but there were family moans about the likelihood of a 12-hour drive...on bumpy roads...without pizza. So Jen is delighted when she learns from our new Goan friend Suhag that Air Deccan, the super-cheap domestic airline, has just started flying near Hampi from Goa. So now it is really a possibility that we could go, but we don't make any plans.

Until.....

We wake Monday morning to find that Jen has accidentally reserved not 5 nights in Panjim, but just one...last night. Since every hotel in town is booked with the film festival, Mark does some fancy footwork and comes up with plane tickets to Hampi and reservations at Hampi Boulder's, which as the name suggests is a hotel built into the rocks. With amazing speed, we pack and head to the airport. After getting through security, we find that oddly, the airport doubles as an appliance showroom:


Your seat number is 12B. Would you like a dishwasher with that?

The plane is only a 70-seater, but much bigger than we need. With only 14 people on the flight, the pilot walks back and asks 7 of us to move to the back of the plane so he can balance it. This is the kind of thing that can either make you nervous or make you giggle. Karma asks why the plane has a big fans on it.

But it's a fun 40-minute flight and we have a great view of a landscape of green farmland, a big river, long trains and iron ore mines as we approach Bellary, where the airport is.


Approaching the landing, with a patchwork of farmland, a small town, and a steel plant in the distance.


It turns out that not only is the flight from Goa just two weeks old, so's the airport. This little jewelbox is the whole airport...snack bar, lounge, ticket counter, security...it's much cuter than the picture shows, with kooky bird sculptures hanging from the ceiling inside. The staff were all just tickled to see us.

We began the drive to Hampi, passing a giant steel mill and a row of signs promising "A Tree for Every Ton Of Steel". Soon we were on an unbelievably bad road, watching the landscape turn from green to red as the iron ore dust completely covered the village, the road, and anything that had ever been lush. Just a kilometer or two from the eerie new gas station....




The iconic and incongruous rural gas station.

To the worst pollution we have seen in India...every leaf, every child's head, every item at the general store, covered in iron ore dust.

Don't adjust your screen. Everything in this picture is really red.

Eventually, we lurched our way out of this area, but it is hard to imagine what life must be like in these conditions. Considerably sobered, we next found ourselves in a landscape that was as fertile as the other was barren....really amazing vistas of rice paddies, banana, sugar cane, and water, water everywhere. We later learned that a dam was built in the 1950's, with canals bringing the water for irrigation throughout the region.

After the sunset, we came to Hampi Boulder's and joined a bonfire barbeque on-- you guessed it -- a boulder. And then we climbed another boulder and found our room, and went to bed.

Sunday hundreds of years ago

We woke at Fort Tiracol to the sound of Church bells just a few yards away. The courtyard of the fort was filled with people from the village for 7 am Service. Listening to the hymns sung a'capella in the Goan language, echoing off the stone walls of the fort, it felt like we'd woken hundreds of years in the past.


Morning mass, three times a week at St. Anthony's in Fort Tiracol. But only Sundays are held in the courtyard.


Tenzin watches from our window.


After the service, we pack up and head for the ferry boat and the road back to Panjim.

On her way out the door, Jen couldn't help speculating that having a nice big trunk like this one would have been more practical than the assortment of backpacks and suitcases that we now carry. Then again, it might not be quite big enough for all our stuff...


In the evening, we decide to visit the Film Festival, even though we don't have tickets and won't be allowed inside to see any shows.


The front of the fancy film center in Panjim.

The streets are filled with performers, vendors and people who have tickets but won't be allowed inside because the shows are oversold.


We know they are promoting something, but we're not sure what.


Karma flaunts her bargaining skills by buying a present for Kobi -- the starting price was 100 rupees, but she got him down to 20.


The official film festival banner.


Walking home from the film festival, we notice the public library. Surely Pearse and Helen Pinch must have walked these halls when they lived in Panjim? We take a commemorative photo just in case.

Quiet Saturday

We think we are the only guests in the fort today, as we have a quiet day reading and playing. In the afternoon, Jen and the four kids walk down the hill to the Hygenic restaurant (that's the name), order 3 rounds of soda bottles for 10 rupees each, play several hands of cards and are circled by a pack of suspiciously dingo-like dogs on the walk home. When Jen is flagging under the weight of Kobi on piggyback, and it looks like she might go down to be the appetizer at tonight's doggie dinner, Kobi scrambles to climb over to Tenzin's shoulders instead....just to get a little more height.

We have a candlelit dinner on the roof of the fort, with pasta and roasted potatoes for some of us, and Goan fish curry for the others. Then we fire up the DVD player on the laptop and try to watch a movie before bed, but the technology fails us and we just turn in.

Here's a photo from the day:


The view from our window at Fort Tiracol.

Traveling to the Northern tip of Goa

We say goodbye to the beautiful Presa di Goa to make room for the movie stars coming in for the India International Film Festival (which has filled all the hotel rooms within an hour of Panjim). Following a tip from Vijay Pinch, we make reservations at a 7 room inn in a historic fort at the very northern tip of Goa.

Maggie walks to the porch of the Presa di Goa Inn, a Portugese historic mansion which has been converted to a 4-room bed-and-breakfast by Turkish owners.


Here's how we travel on a trip like this....rent a Toyata Qualis, carry the luggage on top (if we're lucky) and hire an Indian driver who knows the roads and when to swerve. This kind of car and driver costs about $25-30 a day for long trips.

On the drive, we stumble into a Bollywood movie set, which is using a bit of road for a motorcycle chase scene. Police are holding vehicles back at either end of the strip of road, but for some reason we are waived through onto the deserted section of road which is now a movie set. The cameramen perched on the top of the hill -- waiting for the actors to come around the bend -- have never seen anything like Mark, particularly since he is leaning out the window singing O Solo Mio as we pass them.


I wish you could see the incredulous expressions on their faces....


Clearly, the "talent" don't know what to make of Mark's offer that he join them in the chase scene.

After an hour's drive, we wait for the ferry boat to Fort Tiracol.


While we're waiting, we patronize one of several hundred thousand shacks selling potato chips and soda on the back roads of India.


Kobi and Uncle Matt on the ferry boat


Twins?

Fort Tiracol was built by Indians from Maharashtra in the mid-1600's with an eye to defending against colonial invaders. In the mid-1700's, the Portuguese succeeded in capturing it, and rebuit it, placing a large stone church at its' center. The fort's most recent role was as an outpost for freedom fighters in the 1950's as they protested the continued Portuguese presence, since the British Empire had pulled out of India in 1947. A few of the "revolutionaries" were killed here, and there is monument to them under a banyan tree. The Portuguese finally left in the late 1960's.

The Fort was converted to a tourist hotel a few years ago -- very swank, with incredible views of the Arabian Sea. We drop our stuff and head for the beach...


To get to the beach, Maggie and Karma have their first....and last...motorbike ride. They liked it a lot....but it made mom nervous!

We have the beach to ourselves, except for a delightful school-bus full of 12-year-olds who have been driven 3 hours to come play here.