Six months into the new job at Inferless, running on fumes and GPU dashboards, I needed to end the year somewhere that didn't have Wi-Fi strong enough to tempt me. Hampi it was: overnight sleeper to Hosapete with three friends, an auto-rickshaw negotiation at 6:30am, and then that first view of the landscape — thousands of giant granite boulders stacked on each other like a god's abandoned physics experiment, with 500-year-old temples scattered in between.

Crossing the river

The climbing scene isn't in Hampi proper — it's across the Tungabhadra on the Sanapur/Anegundi side, which in our case meant a coracle crossing: a giant round basket-boat that spins gently as it goes, piloted by a man who has clearly done this forty thousand times and enjoys watching tourists grip the sides. Bikes, backpacks, eight humans, one coracle. Physics again, abandoned.

We rented crash pads from a climbing shack near the Golden Boulders — run by a guy who free-soloed a warm-up problem in flip-flops while explaining the rental terms, which was both a sales pitch and a threat.

The climbing

Hampi granite is beautiful and it is sharp. The crystals give you friction that feels like cheating — your feet stick to nothing — and in exchange it quietly sandpapers your fingertips away. We stuck to the V0–V3 range, which in Hampi terms still means committing top-outs on rounded eggs of rock with the crash pad looking very small below.

The rhythm settled in fast: climb from 7 to 10:30, surrender when the rock turned to lava, temples in the afternoon, golden hour back on the boulders. Midday climbing in Hampi is not brave, it's just a burn injury with extra steps.

The other Hampi

The afternoon sessions were their own trip. The Virupaksha temple with its resident elephant. The Vittala complex and the stone chariot, which really is as good as every photo suggests. Walking through the old bazaar ruins where an empire's marketplace used to roar and it's now just wind and parakeets. Climbing and ruins scratch the same itch, weirdly — both are about reading rock with your hands.

The mishap

Day two, mid-afternoon, feeling strong, I got greedy on a sloper top-out and a coin-sized flap of skin came off my palm — the classic flapper. There is no dignified way to handle a flapper. You tape it, you declare yourself "team photographer," and you spend the rest of the trip pointing at holds other people should try. My fingertips were done anyway; the skin, not the muscles, is what gives out in Hampi.

New Year's Eve

We closed the year on Matanga Hill for sunset — a 30-minute scramble to the best view in the region, the whole boulder field going amber, temple gopurams poking out of the chaos. Then back near the guesthouse where someone had a bonfire going by the paddy fields, a guitar appeared as guitars do, and 2023 ended with burnt marshmallows and taped-up hands.

Take-aways

  • Mornings and evenings only; midday rock is lava, not a metaphor
  • Tape before you flapper, not after
  • Rent pads on the Sanapur side, carry more water than feels reasonable
  • Climbing on history hits different — every summit has a temple in the view

Best trip-per-rupee of the year. We were back before the 1st with sand in every bag and already planning the return.