Our third day started early with a sunrise hike and a birdwatching tour. Glorious!
We headed out to our location along with ox-driven carts with locals heading to work. We passed the Tungabhadra River and walked up a steep but not very long hill. The gray morning light slowly brightened as the perfectly round orange orb rose from the horizon, shining light on the hidden temple we were looking at. Our quiet voices were overshadowed by a surround sound of bird songs. I couldn’t get a lot of great photos of birds as the light wasn’t great yet, but I didn’t care. Chandra Shekara, our naturalist bird guide, pointed out various birds as they flew, landed and flitted away. He had an amazing speaker that played bird songs to draw birds in so that helped us with our sightings.
sounds.
After the sun rose, we walked down to the temple we had been looking at from above. This temple is really affecting me positively, as I feel I’m in a place that is not normally visited. I could feel history there, imagine the sounds of the prayers and the merchants selling wares. I was a bit disappointed when other tourists came by, but I was able to enjoy my moment, nonetheless.
The Achyutaraya Temple is from the 1534. This was one of the last grandiose projects before the fall of the empire and was built in the Vijayanagar style.
It was here we saw more interesting birds, including a whole colony of Spotted Owlets, an usual sight we relished. It’s been a while since the trip happened so I hope my bird name are correct!
Below was the rarest bird we saw: The Black Blue-Faced Malkova. Note the bright blue eye.
As we left there was a whole colony of Rosy Starlings, a migratory bird from Himanchal Pradesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
We also saw a flock of Blue Tailed Bee-eaters enjoying the wires as a resting spot. These migratory birds make nests in the ground!
The Bazaar located in front of the temple is of course called the Achyuarataya Bazaar. A jeweler’s box with precious stones was found in the floor with historians guessing perhaps it had been hurriedly buried during the invasion of the capital in 1565. Behind the Bazaar was the temple pool. This is where we saw the Black Blue-Faced Malkova. On the path we saw Leopard and Sloth Bear droppings, so one could imagine those animals walking up and down the path like we were!
Our guide pointed out some leopard poop with bones inside. He shared how precarious life in the village is. The monkeys come into town because they forage food from the humans and then the leopards smell their urine and wait for them to stretch and fall down from the tree and then they eat them.
Our walk continued past more ruins of this city and the well-preserved Varaha Temple.
We walked and finally saw the river. The first half of the river was surrounded by rocks, but the second half with greenery. It was such a visual shock to see so much green!
These are the best photos of wild butterflies I have ever taken. Their rapid movements made capturing such views very difficult so I was pretty pleased!
This man is fishing on traditional fishing boat. One can pay for a ride on these boats, but we decided not to.
Women were taking advantage of the tourist location to sell vegetables, therefore, where there is food there are monkeys! Most interesting for me was this baby Bennett Mako monkey who is about a week old. The father (I assume) was grooming him and gave me a dirty look when I stepped too close, so I moved back.
The tour ended with us walking through the rock tunnel, past some wishing rock arrangements and off to the parking lot where the car was waiting for us. We went out to lunch, rested and then continued touring without a guide. More on that in my next post!
