Eager to employ leaves of absence a few weeks before they expired, I booked a round-trip ticket between Bangalore and Hospet, and a guestroom in Sanapur. Two days later, I packed my backpack with unsteady hands and took the bus to Hospet, with a broken heart.

The bus reached the town before the peep of day. During the auto-rickshaw ride from Hospet to Hampi, I saw in the soft light of the dawning sun solitary chickens crossing thoroughfares. The familiar redolence of cow ordure seemed to harvest sanguinity in a distant settlement.

The ride through the labyrinthine streets across the Virupaksha temple gave me a glimpse of a town carved by the devoutness of those inhabiting it, and painted with the vehemence of those embracing it for the first time. I reached the Tungabhadra River in Hampi three hours before the motorboat was scheduled to depart. From the stone steps behind the mooring, I beheld a fascinating thing in the air: the product of a Paragliding service named Hampi by Sky. As much as I wished to avail the uplifting service, that I would have to leave my dear backpack unguarded during the trip dissuaded me from signing up for the fleeting but exciting journey through air.

People, sanctified and sodden from the karmic dipping in the venerated water, came trudging up the steps one after another until they descried foreigners, whereupon they delightedly advanced towards them to have their pictures taken. Most fathers prodded their lamblike children to stand alongside foreign tourists for a prized picture. As they passed by me, a flock of animated children orally recalled the English names they had gathered from a young couple.

The sound of a plastic bag uncovering always attracted the hopeful, hungry dogs in the vicinity. Occasionally, the frisky monkeys created a ruckus in the far-flung branches of a gigantic tree. The emergence of an elephant escorted by the devotees of a neighbouring temple pleased tourists who were weary of waiting for the ferry. Thrilled and equipped with cameras, they followed the group to watch the cynosure of all eyes bathe. The motorboat arrived when the large mammal reached the bottom of steps.

Most of my time at the Waterfall Guesthouse was spent in its bistro, for my room, owing to its lack of natural light and dimly lit bulb, promoted lethargy and accentuated woes of the time. With the possible itinerary secured in my pocket, and a sanguine disposition, I took off on a rented moped the same morning.

It was the bird sanctuary which I intended to visit first, but since the passers-by on whom I was dependent for seeking directions knew not of one in the village, the plan was shelved. A diversion of route led to the Sanapur Lake where, riding merrily up the sunlit path, it appeared to me that I was the only human among the unusually positioned boulders that noon; I was in a fool’s paradise.

The path, devoid of flora, seemed endless. The frivolous ride in scorched surroundings continued until a man and a boy, as they rode past me on a moped, trumpeted the fruitlessness of journeying forward. The boy was a native guide to a group of tourists whom I had earlier met near an abandoned dam, and the man a part of the same group that comprised software engineers employed in Hyderabad. One of them, an avid traveller and a gifted artist, possessed a guidebook on Hampi. Leafing through its pages, I realised that I will have to revisit the town of ruins.

The intense daylight rendered me incapable of exploring Sanapur. I bade them farewell and prepared the phone to play a song that limned dreams dreamt in a desert. A little further ahead, a fatigued tourist requested me to leave him at the nearby intersection while his friend waited for another solo rider to come into sight. The duo had got to the lake on foot; discouraged by the oppressive heat, they considered their trip to the ‘other side of the river’ futile.

When one is in Sanapur, the “other side of the river” refers to Hampi. It is the same Tungabhadra River where both tourists and localities wait for a coracle or a motorboat to take them to the opposite shore. I reached my room, sun-bronzed and worn-down. The cold shower taken that blazing hot afternoon reinvigorated my withered system from skin to bones. The bistro, whose windows were festooned with flamboyant drapes and floor covered with mattresses, served appetising food and beverages. The homely atmosphere its interior drew lodgers together. Often, I would find a man playing the ukulele in a certain corner, perhaps in an attempt to stay refreshed.

Hours of daylight that could be spent seeing the sights are almost always withheld by Hypnos, during my retreats. It was close to the day’s end when I awoke, blue and dithering about my solo journey. Before long, I jumped on the moped and pedalled off to the Monkey Temple, where I hoped to see many mollycoddled monkeys before twilight. More than once during the ascent over 570 odd steps, I was accosted by youngsters who always had their hands stretched out for an insincere handshake with a tourist, and their minds set to ask every tourist their name. Short of breath as a result of traipsing uphill, I had no desire to indulge in such desultory greetings of which foreign tourists are commonly the recipients.

A familiar picture of the radiant sunset with a bare tree in the foreground, shared widely on the internet to describe the splendor of the town, materialised when I reached the pinnacle. Since the western skies had many a spectator, a spot whence I could travel to the other world, transfixed by the evocative colours of the parting sun, could not be found. When my vision of the deserted terrain in the east was beginning to fade away into darkness, I left the place.

The name of the temple, I later realised, referred to the Monkey God named Hanuman. Striding down the steps, I found a man clad in a saffron robe, akin to an ascetic, counting cash. At the sight of me, he began to chant the Lord’s name. The pair of shoes, whose loss was anticipated throughout the walk, was present, to my relief. A feeble dog, with her charming expression, followed tired visitors who had descended from the top. She was the pet of a keeper of a shop set near the entrance. Having birthed many puppies over the years, she was recently spayed by a foreign tourist, a veterinarian.

The night had fallen on the sun-kissed ground. That I was alone did not incommode me until I happened to meet three scoundrels on a motorbike. Deeply incensed by their ribaldry, I put the pedal to the metal and reached the guesthouse that then seemed to be a haven.

At the bistro, a youth from Manali described his misguided teenage years that led to his present directionless state in which he was moored to the guesthouse working as a waitron while his friends, having broken their word, enjoyed their private enterprise in Hampi without him. The host of the guesthouse engaged with his guests in the manner of an old friend as they gave an account of the places they had hitherto visited in India and shared their impending travel plans.

The following day, I intended to visit the Lakshmi Temple based on the host’s hand-drawn direction. For the umpteenth time during my sojourn in the town, a stranger waved to me. Reminded of the recent offensive incident and thus vexed, I pretended to take no notice of him. In pursuit of the temple, more than a few miles were covered and the adjoining villages inadvertently traversed. In a sun-drenched, barren land of a village, I saw two little girls frolicking outside their makeshift shelter. I wondered why the distant, passing sight of companionship took hold of me that afternoon, bringing my moped to a halt.

Hopelessly, I resumed my search for the Lakshmi Temple until I saw the deserted archway to the Durga Temple. By this time, due to the futility of my long ride, I had mentally discarded the itinerary. An old lamppost was the only source of shade on the angled road that led to the temple. Yet again, I was surrounded by massive boulders that created an illusion of a place bereft of human movement.

The Durga Temple served free food every day and also sheltered the homeless most of who passed time reading spiritual books at its stairway. An affable man named Lingappa accompanied me to the temple and of his own accord came to be the guide.

Wary of human presence, yet innocuous, the gray langurs with their pensive eyes surveyed me as I moved towards a ruin around which they romped playfully. Since they were accustomed to Lingappa’s presence on account of his frequent visits, I, who watched them in awe and with affection, ignoring my guide’s demonstration of a musical stone, seemed to be the sole cause of their distrust. He identified the monkey who had had her hand incapacitated from an electric shock one night, and as I stood staring at her, he remarked, with eyes filled with sympathy for the monkey and gratitude for the Almighty, that that she survived the accident was a miracle.

The musical stone bore no corporeal feature that distinguished it from its neighbouring counterparts. When knocked, it produced a sound so pleasant that one only marvelled at its natural formation. Never before had I found myself surrounded by a plethora of rocks of various figures and proportions whose very presence educed strange wonderment as they embodied an ancient relationship between the place and its inhabitants who, now long perished from the earth, once dwelt amongst the same rocks. An elevated view of the spellbinding town of ruins as much as the realm of my vision allowed, and the coruscating emerald pond of the Lakshmi Temple several rocks away and below, ephemerally filled me with complacent gratification in the face of paucity of time for exploration.

I twigged that I had not misjudged the location of the Lakshmi Temple. Indeed a passer-by misdirected me when I was a stone’s throw away from it. Regardless, I could not have paid a visit to the temple where a crowd had been gathered for a wedding in its premise, as was evident from the music originating from yonder and reverberating through the torrid but placid air of Sanapur.

The rock-hemmed pathway to the cavern beneath us characterised a claustrophobic’s nightmare. It brought to my mind an unsettling image of confinement amid humans and reptiles. Afraid that I might not be able to worm my way back into the open ground, I refused to explore the tenebrous space underneath. When, sweltering under the midday sun, I expressed astonishment at the ability of an empire to prosper in such sultry purlieus, Lingappa, in an effort to respond, asked me to follow him at once. It took me awhile to espy a meditating ascetic among the fragments, for at first sight, his indistinguishable figure seemed to commingle with the nearby boulders that carried the pigment of his skin. According to Lingappa, the man was to preserve his state of abstinence, without food, for the next fifteen days.

The significance of a certain rock-strewn space that one found along the way could have gone unacknowledged, just as probable as it was for my shallow gaze to overlook it in a region where rocks are prevalent, had I not the pleasure of Lingappa’s company. It is believed that one’s dream of having one’s own abode materialises when one lays a stone in this sacred space. The array of stones so thoughtfully laid by the visitors bespoke their desire for domicile. Two stones laid one above the other betokened somebody’s dream of possessing a two-storied house.

Lingappa had two young children, and a tragedy had befallen him only recently when he lost his wife during childbirth. When he told me that he was the same man whose welcoming, waving gesture I had not returned that morning, I was very sorry, for his was a gesture of invitation to the relatively unfrequented temple.

Fear of yet another mishap engulfed me as the brakes of my moped failed to exert control under the weight of two bodies on the downward sloping road. It veered in the manner of a skittish serpent, occasionally bumping into stones on the periphery. The only course of action was to steer ahead, come what may. Fortunately, we did not encounter a vehicle in the opposite direction until we reached the end of the angled road. The jarring ride left us thanking our stars. I dropped Lingappa to his destination and continued my journey.

The ride on the moped, which at first seemed smooth as I effortlessly rode with one hand, was later obstructed by one too many glitches. The final breakdown occurred in the vicinity of the guesthouse when no amount of kick-start facilitated its operation. The fierce rays of the sun which penetrated my parched skin had long beaten me down; it was a hopeless situation. But soon, I saw a fellow lodger approaching with a jocund countenance and a bicycle. He was kind enough to haul the battered moped to our guesthouse while I dragged his bicycle along.

As the time for the departure of the last motorboat drew near, I bade farewell to the guests and left for the river. A panoply of trinkets and shades adorned the obscure street lined with hotels. I shed the thought of boarding the motorboat, and strolled through the street, surveying the exquisite accessories.

Under the aloof sky where hung a waning moon, the river carpeted by the eldritch melancholy of dusk glinted as I waited for a sailing vessel. I heard the voice of despair before I thrust the knot of woes to the subconscious. The end of a whimsical trip was only a midnight away. One could wade through to the opposite shore if it were a shallow river. I clambered on to the coracle, and clutching my backpack observed my anxiety over aquatic misadventure until the end of the brief passage.

The interior of the Virupaksha Temple was submerged in the amber light radiated from a lamppost. The navel was bespangled with a cluster of earthen oil lamps. On the crimson carpet lay dogs who regarded themselves as the custodians of the centuries-old temple. My pace that was steered by the tranquil observation of the legendary architecture around me was disturbed by a young man who, along with his younger siblings, buttonholed me. He alternated between sharing his history and enquiring about mine. I excused myself when I saw the chance of a pause in conversation, and continued to plod along the sanctum. But the brief encounter impelled me to first hide under a structure shrouded in darkness, and then march out of the temple when I became aware that, in the midst of their boredom, they had chosen to trail me. Outside, a little girl left me nonplussed when, extending her hand towards me, she uttered “Thank you”.

During the auto-rickshaw ride that was short of neither a fatuous chatter nor subjective questions aimed at me, I wondered why, notwithstanding my adoption of a laconic attitude throughout the sojourn, I was interminably waylaid. That I was alone could have instigated it, withal there was no dearth of interceptors in Hampi.