Old and Gold: The Almond Gold Badami

After half a day at Aihole and Pattadakal, we made our way into Badami and had lunch at a one-off restaurant recommended by our guide. A regular meal of bhindi, jawar roti, dahee, rasam, rice and dry sprouted moong was very welcome after all the jeera aloo and dal fry we had been eating so far. We were also offered the special "tourist K-tea"; we made ourselves believe that it indeed was special. 

After the meal, we started with the famous Badami caves. The craft with which these caves depicted Shiva, Vishnu and Jaina deities was awe-inspiring. These rock caves, within the red sandstone rock mountains, represent sculptures formed by a process of removal from the rock as opposed to structural temples, which are built.

The Badami caves are a set of 4 caves that were carved between 6th and 8th Century AD. Starting from the present Badami settlement, the caves are found along a path climbing up, starting with cave 1 at the base and ending with cave 4 at the top. The first caves is devoted to Lord Shiva, Cave 2 and 3 are devoted to Lord Vishnu and 4th one to Jain Tirthankars. It was interesting to see the elaborate carvings at the naturally illuminated parts towards the front and since the garbhagriha is sunk deep inside, with limited light reaching inside, the insides of these caves are extremely simple with little or no carvings. With a full sun flaring up in the front, there was hardly any light still and we could smell the presence of bats in all the garbhagrihas.

From what is known, the 1st and 2nd caves came up before the 3rd and 4th. In terms of complexity of design too, the 1st and 2nd, which were relatively easy to access, have simpler design and the latter two would have been made after the proficiency was achieved in simpler and basic rock cut sculpting. The 3rd Vishnu cave is the most ornate amongst all four. It is also the biggest of all, though shallower in depth than the 1st and 2nd caves. Even the 4th Jaina cave is shallow though resembles the 3rd cave in its design and facade. It has the inscription in old Kannada which says that the Chalukya king Mangalesha created a temple of Vishnu which was better than any other temple previously made. This inscription helped in putting the timing of the caves in perspective, at around the end of 6th century. 

Agriculture and tourism are the two primary sources of economic product for Badami, which is a taluka under Bagalkot district. For the district itself, agriculture is the largest employer. The drive around the temple circuit of three towns was full of sugarcane, maize, corn and amazing stretches of sunflower plantations. This agriculture is mostly subsistence agriculture other than few bigger farms.  The region also seems to have issues with rainfall and irrigation. 
Given the proximity to the other UNECO site and the absolute amount of heritage it holds, Badami town seemed disconnected with its tourism potential  and with the immense heritage it was surrounded with. Tourism didn’t seem to have much bearing on the local livelihoods. The place has only about 11 ASI certified guides covering the Badami-Pattadakal-Aihole circuit. They are too many for the off-season and too less for the peak season. Even the entrance area of the Badami caves didn't have shops or any attempt whatsoever, of tapping this potential.

The first visual encounter with the Badami range of rocky-mountains will make you realize that it is a rock-climber’s paradise. However the sport is not really popular. With some efforts lately, a rock-climbing center has come up in Badami under the General Thimayya National Academy of Adventure, Karnataka. We are hopeful that the Badami of future will indeed be one of the finest heritage cities of India 

Rock, Paper, Scissor: Rock, Inscriptions, Time

It is one of those slow-witted titles that I try to hold on to by finding even slower-witted ways of justifying it. The hand-game of rock paper, scissors occurred to me because of the copious amount of rocks that were in front of us when we reached Badami. The way the game is about one-upping the other, the Badami caves and temples in and around Aihole and Pattadakal seemed to be a play of sorts too. Inscriptions beats rocks as rocks are inscribed on. Time beats inscriptions as time is wiping them off. And Badami rocks have been beating time as they still stand tall even after 1400 units of time measured in years have passed on.

Driving on from Belgaum passing through many sugar and maize fields, we reached Badami just as the setting sun was shining on the rock formations towering above the town. Some of the roads we crossed were literally on the field, with nothing but farms on both sides. We crossed our first closed railway crossing of our road trip so far as we entered Badami.

Most of the present Badami town is along one road, NH 367 lined with general stores, hardware stores, vegetables shops, a petrol pump, a post office and a few hotels and this stretch is barely 2 kilometers long with the famous Badami caves at one end. We found a hotel on the ‘fringe’ of the city. In this case, the ‘fringe’ was approximately half a kilometer from the main market.

We wanted to cover the entire circuit of Badami, Pattadakal and Aihole in one day and hence decided to take a guide the next morning. We found one near Badami caves, and decided to start from the farthest point and come back to Badami by the second half of the day.

Aihole was the first capital of Chalukya kings before they moved the capital to Badami. The place has over a 100 temples and we were able to see only a fraction of them. It was a curious sight to see a lot of local families still staying in a significant number of temple ruins around Aihole. People going about their daily lives amidst the ruins seemed to make it much more live or at least equally live in comparison to the live temples where the deity is still worshipped.

The Aihole temples are a mix of both: wonders of structural temples such as Durg temple, Lad Khan complex and others in that area; and models of early rock cut temples at Ravana Phadi and Meguti hill. Within these temples, some have simpler design with only decorative carvings depicting narratives from Indian mythology and others are more sophisticated with evolved use of space, design, sculpting as well as placement of deity.  There were temples where the left pillar of the entrance was un-carved and the right had exquisite carvings. In a way, these unfinished stones carried the story of their time when the kings experimented at Aihole and then moved on to Pattadakal and Badami, leaving some of them unfinished.

Pattadakal, now a UNESCO world heritage site, was the place of patta-abhishek i.e. coronation of the Chalukya kings. We were told that the site was chosen along one of the east facing banks of Malaprabha River because the river here flows from south towards north - a unique feature considered auspicious by Chalukyan kings and priests. The Pattadakal complex of 10 temples, stands firm for last almost 1400 years. It stands in all its glory and grandeur, but almost isolated to the world around it. It is a UNESCO world heritage site but all that surrounds it doesn’t seem to have a reverence for that fact. It however may be true the other way round as well. We didn’t really know what it meant to have a UNESCO world heritage status. Being in Pattadakal and Hampi we realized that the benefit that locals perceived to be of value, was the brand of being a UNESCO heritage site. People traveling the region want to visit these sites and hence the brand ensures such tourists. However there isn’t a financial commitment involved though it provides technical expertise if needed.

The temples at Pattadakal represent the high point of Chalukyan architecture and their experimentation in blending different temple forms (Nagara, Dravida and Vesara) from the north and south of India. At the site itself, Nagara style temples are on the northern side and southern side has Dravida style temples. The entrance to this complex is as majestic as are the structures you enter to. The skyline is dotted with the mix of towers, curvilinear, pyramidal and hybrid, of differing heights and grandeur.

As you walk near the temples on southern edge, including the still worshipped Nandi temple and Virupaksha temple, you can imagine the episodes of coronation of some of the kings who built these structures. The kings are long gone but the river still flows along the broken idols, fallen stones and eroded edges of many of these structures, signifying the permanence of time and reminding us that time is stronger than stones and one day it will win.