Climbing in Badami (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

This article in three parts is a composite of two distinct narratives, one in normal text and the other, in italics.

The story of Badami is as layered as its sedimentary rock.

If you are used to the Himalaya or even the Western Ghats, then, on the approach to Badami from Hubli, you wouldn’t expect anything that hints `hill.’ The world is flat and open to the sun. Vegetation is the stuff of hardy scrubs; large fields, still standing patches of sunflower, dry sugarcane and the occasional tree. Massive bony oxen pull carts; buffalos saunter by, dogs have their tongues hanging out trying to stay cool. It is hot. Sun burnt farmers, old women with dry wrinkled skin. Tractors join the traffic. Dust rises easily. It is January. I can imagine what peak summer would be, here. More important for climber, there is not an iota of hill anywhere. Then at one bus stand en route, you see an isolated rocky outcrop next door. Slowly, as the bus moves on, you start seeing similar isolated outcrops, at best a long wall and all no more than a few hundred feet high. Reach Badami and the rock walls there are high but not tremendously so. They are beautiful. Badami’s story lay in the subtext. If the Himalaya is famous for its marine fossils, dating back to the ancient Tethys Sea, then here, it is the other extreme.

According to Dr Shrinivas V. Padigar, Head of the Department of Ancient Indian History and Epigraphy, Karnatak University, Dharwad, the rock at Badami contains no fossil record as it dates back to the Precambrian period, or simply put, a time when no complex life forms existed. Accounting for roughly 7/8^th of Earth’s history, the Precambrian period ended around 540 million years ago. Respect for Badami’s rock thus stems from a dimension different from physical properties. It is frozen time. To imagine such antiquity, you should take a peek at the shape of continents and where India was in the Precambrian period. If the world’s highest mountains – the Himalaya – were formed after India drifted at a speed that is superfast by continental drift standards and smashed into the Eurasian plate, then the India of the Precambrian period hadn’t dreamt the Himalaya. India’s northward drift started only 140 million years ago. The Himalaya, the child of India’s collision with Eurasia, is much, much younger.

Simply put, the rock at Badami is OLD.

Badami and Hampi attract rock climbers.

Both places are in Karnataka, South India.

They are separated by 146 kilometres, small enough for climbers fuelled by passion, to cover for a taste of both worlds. Hampi is strongly identified with bouldering, the art of climbing boulders with little gear – just a pair of climbing shoes, crash pad to cushion one’s fall, chalk to keep the hands sweat-free and a friend to `spot’ you. Badami has bouldering plus a wealth of longer routes for sport climbing, which entails rope, pre-fixed bolts in the rock, more climbing gear than used in bouldering and definitely a second climber to `belay.’ Badami offers beautifully weathered sandstone (we call everything here sandstone but as geology shows, it is more complicated). Badami’s stone is kind on climbers’ fingers. Climbing in Hampi is done on granite. It shreds skin.

Badami has several popular climbing areas. From past visits, I remember crags named Indian Alley, Ganesh Plateau, Temple Area and Badami Deluxe. Today, at any one of these known climbing spots, you will see several bolted sport climbing routes. N. Ravi Kumar, who hails from Bangalore and is currently Director of NOLS India, was among the early climbers frequenting Badami. According to him those days, there was nothing on the approach to the Badami Deluxe and Temple Area crags, save a house and the small facility of the General Thimayya National Academy of Adventure (GETHNAA). Where several shops and houses now stand there was nothing. All the initial climbing was traditional (trad) in style, using removable protection as opposed to permanent protection. “ There were no bolts then,’’ he said. It changed with sport climbing’s ascent in India. One of the great attractions of sport climbing is that thanks to prefixed protection (expansion bolts), climbing lines are possible on rock faces otherwise devoid of adequate features to host trad gear (an overview of the various styles in climbing can be had from the September 2013 post Climbers in the Big Wall Mirror [Part Two]. It can be accessed either through the blog’s archives or simply click on this link: https://shyamgopan.wordpress.com/2013/09/).In turn, that makes moves in sport climbing pretty difficult because tackling potentially sketchy rock faces is built-in into the ethos of this discipline.

The rock face hosting Ganesha (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

In late January 2014, as I stood in Badami facing the orange glow of its sandstone rock walls, my attention was on a rock overhang far to the right near the Temple Area crag. Bit over one kilometre from the local bus depot, tucked into the curve of the rock was a sport climbing route called Ganesha, sometimes, Ganesh. In climbing, routes have names. Graded 8b+ in terms of climbing difficulty on the French scale, Ganesha was right then the toughest among known, graded sport climbing routes in India. Ganesha was bolted some years ago by Alex Chabot, a champion climber from France. Its first ascent happened probably in 2011; the credit went to French climber Gerome Pouvreau. In Rohit Chauhan’s guidebook to climbing in Hampi and Badami, Ganesha’s grade was speculated as 8c or 8c+. This publication was the first guidebook for this area. Rohit recalled it as a rather lonely endeavour. Encouragement and support came from just a handful of people. A few overseas friends and Delhi-based climber-businessman, Mohit Oberoi, backed him. At that time however, Ganesha was yet to be fully climbed. Rohit said in a recent email from Spain that he had to count on estimation by others familiar with the Ganesha project, for a sense of the new route’s grade. As often happens in climbing, there is a gap between the perception of a route in project stage, and reality. The right grade is a consensus among climbers who climbed the route fully. Multiple ascents over a period of time then lower the grade. 8b+ is what Ganesha earned after first ascent; it is what it still has for grade.

The rocky hill dominating Badami’s landscape is part of the ` Kaladgi Series’ stretching from Kaladgi to Gajendgragad – that’s what I gathered locally. The most ancient of the rocks in this region is probably the batch of sedimentary rock in the vicinity of Kuligeri Cross, a place that you pass by en route to Badami. For a lay person like me seeking to know Badami, the age of the rock is however only one half of the fascination. As climber, the Badami rocks are my favourite. Something about them matches the enjoyment from climbing and the engagement with rock, I seek. But I am no geologist. I don’t know how to distinguish a rock of recent origin from Precambrian. My perception as I climb is tactile; touch and feel. Badami’s rocks are like fine sandpaper yet firm. Plus, they are wonderfully eroded into all sorts of cuts, grooves, pockets and jug holds, not to mention – slippery smooth in some areas. In popular lore, the agent that caused all this – from sedimentation to sculpting – is said to be water with one theory being that this area was below water once. Today’s Badami is quite inland from the sea (it is approximately 250 kilometres by road from Goa on India’s west coast); it is also 1923 feet up from sea level. There is even a rock arch of sorts, the remains of powerful weathering, some say by water – you can see its scaled down model in the local archaeological museum. How and where do we position water in Badami’s geological history?

I contacted Dr Navin Shankar, a geologist now working as Research Specialist with Excelsoft Technologies Pvt Ltd, an e-learning company in Mysore. According to him the Badami rock formations date back to the Proterozoic era, around 1.6 billion to one billion years ago. Within the Precambrian (4.6 billion years ago to about 540 million years ago), this would qualify to be in the second half. The Proterozoic period is divided into three stages. The time of formation of the Badami rocks corresponds roughly to the middle stage – the Mesoproterozoic, noted as the first age from which a fairly reliable record of the Earth’s geological history survives. Wikipedia describes this period as still poorly understood despite critical changes to the chemistry of our seas, the sediments of the earth and the composition of air. It is also the dawn of life, the age of development of sexual reproduction in micro organisms, very important for complex life forms yet to come.  And if you thought ` life’ here means life as we know it, please note: oxygen levels of the time may have been about one per cent of today’s and slowly rising. It was a very different Earth.

Badami as seen from the top of the adjacent hill (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

The north and north-eastern segments of peninsular India had witnessed mountain building activity in the Mesoproterozoic period. This involved subduction of the margins of plate boundaries complemented by intraplate extensional tectonics resulting in the formation of a series of intracratonic basins, namely the Kaladgi formation. As per information on the Internet, intracratonic basins are a type of sedimentary basin. They form within stable continental interiors. They are typically shallow, circular in shape and have long histories of relatively slow subsidence. Over time, the intracratonic basins were overlain by sedimentary rocks and sediments. “ The rocks from the Mesoproterozoic age in the Badami area have been categorized under the Kaladgi Supergroup, further classified into Badami and Bagalkot groups,’’ Dr Shankar said. The Badami group comprises horizontally bedded multiple sequence of arenite and shale with limestone in small amounts. These sedimentary rocks and sediments are found in a large area of horizontally bedded ferruginous arenites from the north-western tip of Raichur district to Bijapur, Belgaum and beyond into Maharashtra state. The Bagalkot group consists of two mega cycles of repeated sequence of argillite followed by chemogenic precipitates predominantly of sandstone and dolomite with quartzite and conglomerate forming the base.

Standing in today’s Badami, it is hard to visualize this geological story. It is flat all around with a few rocky hills. Where are the sedimentary basins? To notice the ancient basins, which can be several kilometres long and wide, we have to get a bird’s eye view; a topographic picture of the region. In that, Dr Shankar said, the basins emerge. Further, some basins are now below the layers accumulated on top. By nature basins are depressions and water collects in depressions. The basins may have held water in the ancient past contributing to the submersion story. However in the vast scale of geological time, water isn’t sole agent forming, compacting and sculpting sedimentary rocks. Theoretically, wind and glaciers also perform that function although glaciers had no role in Badami. Into this, mix a later development. Badami now stands on the Deccan plateau. This large plateau formed around 60-70 million years ago through volcanic eruptions lasting several thousand years, some say, when India drifted over the Reunion Hotspot. The Deccan is a massive feature, much younger than Badami’s rocks but one that adds to the geological influences a scientist must sift through to understand still older times.

(……TO BE CONTINUED)

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)

Tuhin in action (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

An early morning, I walked away from the Badami bus depot towards the local APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) office on the outskirts of town. From here a dusty road branched off to the left, through an archway, onto the nearby hill – it was the way to the Temple Area crag and Ganesha. A young man by the roadside saw me approach, backpack and all. “ Hello,’’ he said. I returned the greeting. “ You…climber?’’ he asked. What do you say, if you used to climb but haven’t done so for a long time? Besides, this whole business of defining climber and seeming one irritated me. I am sure the young man didn’t mean it so but I was already agitated with my thoughts. I smiled and shook my head. “ Climber – that word is for better others. I am simply in search of Ganesha,’’ I said. “ Oh, Ganesha project – it is right over there,’’ he said pointing to a rock face. It was a fine morning and the young man appeared a nice person to talk to. “ What do you do?’’ I asked. “ I am a climbing guide,’’ he said. That was new development for in none of my previous visits to Badami had anyone offered such an introduction. I met him a few more times later, at the crags, where he was with clients. He had been climbing for the past two years. Resident of Badami, he stayed in a house right where I met him, just inside the archway, close to the GETHNAA facility, not far from Ganesha. His name was Ganesh.

I was in Badami to learn more about another person, young like Ganesh.

Eighteen year-old Tuhin Satarkar from Pune, climbed Ganesha on December 14, 2013. He became the first Indian to complete an 8b+ route in India. He is the only climber supported by Red Bull yet in India. Internationally, Red Bull sponsors many athletes, among them climbers. “ Indian climbers have the strength and endurance required for demanding routes. What we lack is technique,’’ Tuhin said.

Tuhin Satarkar (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Although climbing infrastructure has improved in India, a huge gap exists between here and overseas. For example, take artificial climbing holds (with rising urbanisation, climbing on artificial walls has become the popular entry for youngsters into rock climbing) – big volume holds, features etc are still only trickling into India. On the other hand, they are the stuff of new routes at world cups and world championships, Tuhin said. We were in the restaurant of a hotel in Badami. The young man’s laptop had a prominent Red Bull sticker; he also offered me a can of the drink. In retrospect, a Red Bull sponsored-trip to climb in Austria and Italy with well known Austrian climber Kilian Fischhuber, in November 2013, may have helped improve his climbing and equip him for the unexpected December-rendezvous with Ganesha. Until this trip, Tuhin’s hardest climb had been a sport route called `Jackpot’ (7b to 7b+) at Sinhagad in Pune. During the 15-20 days spent climbing in Europe, he did his first 8a, a route in Italy. The tryst with Ganesha materialized after Paige Classen, an American climber who became the first woman to climb Ganesha, sought his help for her climbing project. Otherwise, Ganesha hadn’t been on Tuhin’s mind. In 2012, he had attempted the route, climbing up to the fourth clip (bolt plus quick-draw placed for protection) before giving up.

On India’s climbing scene, Tuhin is unique. At the decade old-Girivihar Climbing Competition in Navi Mumbai, I have seen him climb when still a school kid, moving over the years from junior category to senior. His parents are climbers. His father Vikas is a noted rock climber in Pune. While many young Indian rock climbers struggle to explain what they do – not to mention, why they do what they do – to their family, Tuhin had the required ecosystem at hand. He started climbing from age seven, growing up in a house with a climbing wall. His first climbing competition was in 2002, an event on the Pimpri-Chinchwad climbing wall in Pune. In 2007, he finished second at the nationals in the under-14 category. That was when he decided to take up climbing seriously; not so much as career as to climb seriously. Somebody he looked up to those days was Vaibhav Mehta, then living in Mumbai and leading a pack of sport climbers, the first bunch of climbers from the region to treat climbing as the only thing they wanted to do. Improving over the years, Tuhin became part of India’s youth team visiting championships in Singapore (2011) and Iran (2012). The Red Bull-sponsorship happened thanks to his participation in the Girivihar Climbing Competition, in a year when the company was one of the sponsors. As Navin Fernandes, Red Bull’s Athletes Specialist based in Mumbai, pointed out – Tuhin fit in well with Red Bull’s approach of investing in athletes when still quite young. Support from Red Bull commenced in 2013. Currently Tuhin is what you could call a professional climber; he climbs just as someone else goes to work in an office. Climbing is what he does every day. In India, Badami is his favourite climbing spot. He also claims to have been a fan of Alex Chabot, watching his videos, much before the French climber visited India and bolted a route named Ganesha.

Badami: stone, temples and caves (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Less than a kilometre from Ganesha as the crow flies is Vidyanagar, a residential colony. Everyone remembers a teacher. I had no problem finding the house of Dr Sheelakant Pattar. Now retired, he used to teach at the local school and college. More important, although majored in science, he is a history buff who took his doctorate in studies pertaining to Badami. According to him the oldest reference to Badami lay in Ptolemy’s works, where the name ` Badamoi’ has been mentioned. This is however contested. Dr Padigar feels that while the reference may exist, there is no certainty yet that Badamoi is Badami. What we do know is that there was a settlement here preceding Badami’s ascent in history. Before we talk of that ascent, let’s shift firmly from Precambrian to the age of human civilization and imagine Badami as a settlement near a rock hill characterized by steep walls. It is the 6<sup>th</sup> century AD. The political landscape of the neighbourhood is authored by such local dynasties / kingdoms as Kadamba, Vishnukundit, Kadachuri, Maurya (not the Maurya of Ashoka) and Nala. Enter, the Chalukyas. Who they were and where they came from appears still a matter of debate, for I came across different views. But the ascent of Badami – then known as Vatapi – under the Chalukyas, owes much to a strategic vision that both Dr Pattar and Dr Padigar pointed out – available readymade in the steep rock walls of Badami was a natural fort. All you had to do was fill in the gaps, which the Chalukyas did; such forts are generically called `Giridurg’ in these parts. In 543 AD, Vatapi burst upon the scene as the capital of the Chalukyas, a dynasty that would eventually become very powerful and influential in the history of this region. Indeed, in present day Badami, many commercial establishments choose to sport ` Chalukya’ in their name; some others fancy ` Pulakeshin,’ that being the name of the dynasty’s greatest king. Dr Pattar provided a bird’s eye view of Badami’s fortification thus: not far from the town is the Malaprabha River, a tributary of the river Krishna (compared to the age of the rocks in Badami, this river originating from the Western Ghats is very young – studies show it is only 40,000 years old). An invading army would have had to first cross the river, then, they would have to tackle what would have been those days a stretch of forest from the river to the fort, before attacking the fort built on steep rock walls. Although the Pallavas, who competed with the Chalukyas for influence in the region, did seize Vatapi briefly and today’s climbers with their modern climbing gear can scale the walls, by the imagination of the 6^th century AD, the place must have seemed secure.

The blitz gang. From left – Madhu, Adarsh, Ajij, Gaurav, Tuhin and Sandeep (Photo: Vinay Potdar)

In mid January 2014, Vinay Potdar, friend and climber, reached Belapur in Navi Mumbai to assist at the annual Girivihar Climbing Competition (for more on the competition, please see earlier posts on this blog – 2014 Girivihar Climbing Competition / Daily Report, 2014 Girivihar Climbing Competition / Countdown and A Competition’s Solo Climb). He was coming straight from days spent climbing in Hampi. Vinay was intrigued by a certain development. Soon after Tuhin’s success on Ganesha and around the same time, in a blitz of sorts, across bouldering and sport climbing, across Hampi and Badami, a handful of young Indian climbers, ranging in age from sub-20 to early-20, cruised past the 8-mark. There was Guarav Kumar (from Delhi)  and Madhu C.R (Bangalore) polishing off Samsara (8a) in Badami, Ajij Shaikh (Pune) pulling off two 8a boulder problems – The Diamond and The Middle Way – in Hampi and Sandeep Maity (Delhi) doing the last two boulder problems plus Black Moon (8a) in Hampi. The Middle Way was made iconic by Chris Sharma of the US, who featured it in `Pilgrimage,’ a film on him climbing in Hampi. The question isn’t so much about who climbed what first or whether some of these routes were done before by others. Making a claim or telling the world of what you did is an option exercised by people in media ridden-world. It is not an expectation set by climbing. What interests more, therefore, is the spectre of a bunch of people, cracking a certain level of difficulty coincidentally around December 2013-January 2014. Mohit Oberoi who runs the Adventure 18 chain of shops that retail adventure gear has longstanding experience in both sport climbing and competition climbing. He attributed the emergent shift to greater availability of climbing infrastructure (artificial climbing walls) and properly graded routes in India. In the past, Mohit himself had climbed close to the 8-level but overseas. The critical element in the new development, he emphasised, is Indians breaching the 8-mark in India. Twenty years ago, the toughest graded climbs by Indians in India were in the early sevens. “ What we are seeing is a much awaited shift,’’ Mohit said.

(……TO BE CONTINUED)

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)

Kilian Fischhuber at work on a new route in Badami (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

The most obvious thing in Badami is its beautiful rock walls.

They not only have this orange-ochre colour, but with the right sunshine, at the right time – they are also dramatic.

Badami’s ancient stone temples and caves add to the scene.

If stone is so obvious, you would think – Badami’s story should be one of stone. That is true but it isn’t wholly so, for as with many organized settlements, the oldest constructions found here are of brick. Dr Padigar attributes this to a rather universal trend – in human civilization, stone and the lifeless initially went hand in hand. Much before people built with stone to live in such buildings, they used stone to build tombs, reserving bricks for inhabitable spaces. In India, the taboo was first broken by Buddhism. A lot of early cave and stone structures in the country is Buddhist in origin. Hinduism followed in adopting the practice. In the Badami region – there are caves and temples here – the oldest caves are Hindu. This aside, Badami’s story in stone goes all the way back to crude stone implements from the dawn of human settlement (these tools are displayed at the local archaeological museum). From such antiquity it spans right up to the glory of stone temples under the Chalukyas. The oldest stone implements discovered date back to about 100,000 years ago, part of what is called by archaeologists as a `stone line’ (suggesting the level of open ground at a time when stone age people would have been active here), a metre and a half below the ground in Lakhmapur. Like Precambrian giving way to eras of complex multi cellular life, from these small, isolated stone implements, human craftsmanship graduates over the years to construction. What is on show in the later and more complex architectural history of the region is the craft of working soft stone. In South India, working hard stone like granite has been the domain of the Tamil kingdoms further south and south east from Badami. Thus the hard granite of Hampi wasn’t exploited by the Chalukyas although Hampi is just 145 kilometres away from Badami. On the other hand, some of the temples of Hampi are built of soft stone brought in from elsewhere. The first detailed report about the stone monuments of Badami-Pattadakal-Aihole is the 1874-work by James Burgess. There is also an earlier photo album-like publication by Meadows Taylor. As medium for craftsmen to work on, Dr Padigar believes that the stone of Badami proper was probably the best in the region; the sandstone here is firm despite being sedimentary in origin. “ The Aihole version tends to crumble,’’ he said. How the soft stone-craft flourished in Badami has interesting angles. Although Badami had trade guilds, guilds of architects, craftsmen and artists don’t seem to have existed – Dr Padigar said. By the Chalukyan era, there were many talented architects in town; some of them were brought from outside Badami as well. Ilkal in the region, has the widest variety of stones and a particular monument in Nandwadagi is unique for converging a variety of stones into one building.

An architect or craftsman in the Chalukyan era wasn’t a specialist devoted to one medium or style. They had to have expertise across mediums – from stone to metal, be versatile. They even had duties as soldiers in war. As regards artistic style, one of the engaging points according to Dr Padigar, is that in the Badami-Pattadakal-Aihole region (collectively called Badami for the purpose of explaining history in this article), you find doses of North Indian architectural styles in the ancient stone buildings. You also find local architects (their names are there in inscriptions) – some of who built without patron for given project – evolving their own hybrid style. For art and architecture, the area was thus a melting pot, a case of north meeting the south. In all of ancient India, the Gupta period is deemed the Golden Age in terms of art and architecture. Dr Padigar thinks that the Chalukyas were much inspired by what was happening in the north and central parts of India and sought to showcase something similar in Badami. He isn’t surprised by the resultant synthesis because even in still older times, as when the great king Ashoka ruled vast parts of India, Badami and its neighbourhood was under the administrative influence of the northern empires. In fact, the range of artistic influences that converged in Badami under the Chalukyas only add to the academic curiosity to find out where these people hailed from. Was there something to the story of their life before Badami that shaped in them the urge to synthesize at a new capital rising from the dust? All this reminded me of my own experience doing a story on Hindustani classical music in North Karnataka (please see earlier post of January 2, 2014: Hubli-Dharwad: Life after the Legends accessible on this link: https://shyamgopan.wordpress.com/category/music/). The question there too had been why Hindustani classical music flourished in Hubli-Dharwad but not further south, say in Mysore, famed for supporting the arts.

Tuhin Satarkar climbing in Badami (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Tall and lanky, Tuhin’s hands and legs reach far on rock. This shapes his climbing style. His successful climbs become projects entailing homework for others with a different climbing style. I recall Gaurav Kumar telling me that he would have to work to climb Ganesha as the route isn’t his style. And climbers do that – every style, every human size has its strengths, ability to innovate. According to Tuhin, Ganesha has strenuous moves at start, cruises through the middle and near the finish poses a battle with fatigue. At the bottom of Ganesha to take a photograph of the climbing route, all I saw was an overhang; the route seemed like ascending the edge of a mild mushroom. As elsewhere in Badami, on Ganesha too, chalk marks on rock betrayed the holds, the features – the key to tackling the route’s challenge. More accurately, one half of the key; the rest is climber. What is a key if you don’t know how to use it?

Through late January to early February 2014, Tuhin and Kilian Fischhuber have been climbing in Badami. Kilian climbed Ganesha soon after arrival. I hung around watching some of their later projects. When I left Badami, two new routes were in the testing stage. One, next to Samsara, had been climbed in sections and was awaiting all the sequences to be sewn up in one flow; the other – on a nearby overhanging rock face – kept defeating the climbers with a very strenuous move in the middle. The unsaid quest across these routes, that tantalizing thought beyond enjoying climbing was – are there routes in Badami exceeding Ganesha in difficulty? Will India get an 8c or 8c+; will we touch the 9-mark? Today the toughest sport climbing routes in the word are in Spain and Norway, both graded 9b+, both climbed by the 20 year-old Czech rock climber, Adam Ondra. The ascent in Spain took him weeks of work.

Amazingly, what the Chalukyas laboured to create by way of influential empire was lost in no time once their power waned. In the sweep of history, Badami’s decline resembles stone dropped in water; as sudden as its appearance as the Chalukya capital, except – the decline is despite new found prominence as capital. As the Chalukyas fade, so does Badami. Post Chalukyas, it came under the orbit of the Rashtrakudas, the Hoysalas, the Vijayanagar kingdom, the Adil Shahi rulers, the Mughals, the Marathas, the British – on to present day India. Everyone who followed the Chalukyas left their mark, but none like the Chalukya.“ Chalukya craftsmanship is in a class of its own,’’ Dr Padigar said. According to him, while there are monuments in Badami hailing from the well known Vijayanagar period, in terms of craftsmanship they don’t match what was achieved 800 years earlier under the Chalukyas. Today Badami sees life as a hot, dusty town framed by timeless sandstone. The town’s architecture is characterized by the characterless architectural mess of modern India, old buildings and new, a clash of concrete, metal, paint and glass. Traffic on its main road has grown. Cell phone towers have appeared and like elsewhere in India, here too, there are those with one hand stuck to the ear, phone sandwiched in between. On the street’s edge, bull dozers are forever tearing down something. Life goes on amid gaping holes in concrete and twisted steel rods puzzled for logic. A man stood on half a balcony and calmly sipped tea observing the rubble. Monkeys sat on roof tops. Pigs ran around and a dark muck lurked in open sewers.

Kilian Fischhuber (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Not all climbers like Badami. I have noticed that.

Many prefer Hampi, reportedly more relaxed and at home with climbing compared to this town.

For the faithful, Badami is the home of sandstone and that route called Ganesha.

In climbing, nothing comes to you and your comfort zone. You have to venture out. Kilian is from Innsbruck in Austria. I asked Kilian what he thought of Badami. “ This is a great place to climb. Good rocks and good routes. My only problem is with the heat,’’ he said one evening, on the winding path to the Temple Area. It was a team composed of three people in the main – Kilian, Tuhin and Johannes Mair, who handled photography and film making. A typical day featured Tuhin climbing and Kilian belaying, or vice versa, with Johannes perched on nearby rock or dangling from a rope, filming the scene. Once in a while, Johannes too climbed. Over an evening and the following morning and evening, I watched Kilian and Tuhin work the two newly bolted routes. Would they be tougher than Ganesha? – I wondered. In sport climbing, the nature of the animal is such that the question can’t be avoided. Climbers I spoke to in Mumbai (where some of the blitz gang had gathered for the 2014 Girivihar Climbing Competition) felt that routes tougher than Ganesha existed in Badami.

Third week of February, I checked with Tuhin to know what happened after I left Badami. Both the new routes, he said, have remained work in progress. Kilian almost completed a climb of the route next to Samsara. But then almost, isn’t the same as completed. And with neither route fully done, it is probably correct not to guess their grade yet. 

The search is on for beyond Ganesha.

(CONCLUDED)

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. He would like to acknowledge the help provided by Dr Shrinivas Padigar, Dr Sheelakant Pattar, Dr Navin Shankar, Vinay Potdar and Dr Sambhu Pankicker towards writing this piece.)