The century-old temples in this village south of India celebrate the anniversary of the Vijayanagar Empire with a folklore festival of elephants and brimming with color and life.
Is held each year in November, invariably between 3 and 5, but this time the Hampi Hampi Utsav and Festival has been postponed to January 2010 to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the enthronement of Sri Krishnadevaraya, King more splendid than ever had the Vijayanagar kingdom that between 1336 and 1565, lit the last great empire that saw India to the arrival of the British.
Hampi, a small village now in the southern state of Karnataka, was the epicenter of this powerful alliance of Hindu villages with army achievement organizadísimo stops the advance of the Muslims, then masters of almost the entire north of the subcontinent. The Vijayanagar also extolled the literature and the arts, and became immensely rich through trade in textiles, gemstones, spices and merchandise Arabian princes and regents were brought from the ports of the Indian and to China.
From this wealth, for 15 miles around the village are scattered the ruins of hundreds of temples that Unesco was pleased to recognize more than twenty years as a World Heritage Site. And in some of the shrines that have come in better shape to take place today where many of the celebrations of this festival which every year attracts thousands of visitors and pilgrims from across the south.
On this occasion, its ‘great days’ will be the 27th, 28th and 29th January, with dance, theater, music, puppetry, fireworks, crafts, horse soldiers in their dress imperial pomp and processions of decorated elephants that conspire to recreate the grandeur of the Vijayanagar empire in an extravagant setting that brims with life and bustle and monumental this dusty little village on the river Tungabadra.
Visitors come to be so many that the guest-house hosting for the year to the thousands of foreigners who come to Hampi to house are not at all. So, at night, thousands of families to literally track installed for a few days inside the main temples, providing a spectacle almost more amazing than that during the day have given their unconditional renowned artists each year joined in the celebrations of the festival.