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A group of lovely local school kids on a field trip commandeered us for a photo in front of this huge monolithic statue, nearly a millennium old, of Vishnu in his avatar as the bulging-eyed Narasimha.

Vijayanagar is a holy site going back to mythological times when it was called the Kingdom of Kishkinda, the realm of the monkeys who helped Lord Rama (another avatar of Vishnu) in his fight against the demon Ravana of Sri Lanka.

But explaining this further would mean going into lengthy details about the popular Hindu epic The Ramayana -- and that is well beyond the scope of this travelogue. But I'll bet all these kids know the story by heart.