Echoes in Stone: A Journey Through Chikmagalur and the Temples of Time

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADITYA S HEGDE

The mountains of Chikmagalur rise not like mere geography, but like ancient guardians of silence. When I first arrived, it was as though I had stepped into another rhythm of existence. My days began with the hush of rain, the world outside my window dissolved in mist so dense that even the nearest tree looked like a faint memory. The mountain was wrapped in clouds, and I was wrapped in stillness.

Time behaves differently in such places. There is no rush, no demand to measure moments in tasks accomplished. The rain falls without expectation, the mist lingers without purpose, and the mountain waits without impatience. In that vast patience, I found myself questioning: Why do we hurry so much through life? Why do we measure existence by progress, by outcomes, by permanence—when nature itself moves in cycles of appearing and vanishing?

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADITYA S HEGDE

What is the worth of a single life, if not in its echo with others?

As I walked along the slopes, each droplet of rain became a reminder of impermanence. A raindrop lives only for a second before merging into soil or stream. Alone, it disappears almost unnoticed, yet when countless drops fall together, they reshape the mountain itself. It struck me then: perhaps our lives are like this. Alone, we are fleeting; together, across generations, we carve rivers through history.

Leaving the mist behind, I descended into history—Belur, Halebid, and the temple ruins of Veeranarayana. Here, silence took on another form. If the mountain’s stillness was vast and formless, the silence of these temples was heavy, sculpted, intentional. Each wall spoke in the language of stone. Every carving was an act of memory, every pillar a frozen hymn.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADITYA S HEGDE

I stood before them not as a tourist, but as a witness. The temples were not simply structures; they were philosophies made visible. Their stone dancers did not just depict movement, they were movement—captured forever in a paradox of stillness. The gods and goddesses carved in their walls seemed less like deities and more like reflections of human longing: for beauty, for meaning, for permanence in a world where nothing lasts.

A hand strikes stone, again, again, again. Faith is not in seeing completion, but in chiseling with devotion anyway.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADITYA S HEGDE

And I wondered: what was it like to live in the age when these temples were not ruins, but living centers of life? I imagined the sound of chants echoing through the halls, the fragrance of incense thick in the air, the hands of devotees folded in reverence, the sculptors at work chiseling with the faith that each strike of stone was also a prayer.

Those sculptors knew something we forget today—that the value of a life is not in what we see finished, but in what we devote ourselves to. Many of them would not have lived long enough to see the temples completed. Yet still they carved, still they gave. Their offering was not to the future, nor to themselves, but to time itself.

And yet, this lesson does not live in temples alone. It lives in everything around us.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADITYA S HEGDE

As I sit to write these thoughts, my laptop rests on a table before me. A simple table, nothing extraordinary. And yet, the more I look at it, the more it feels like another temple of time. Who designed it? Whose mind first imagined its shape, its measurements, its strength? Who were the artisans whose hands cut, polished, and assembled it? Who was the business owner who built the enterprise, the workers who kept it running, the merchants who carried it, the salesperson who finally placed it in someone’s home?

And deeper still—where did this wood come from? How many years did the tree stand, drinking in light, offering shade, breathing out the air that sustained countless lives? How many birds nested in its branches, how many animals rested under its shade, how many children grew up breathing the oxygen it released without demand or recognition? At what moment did this tree become a tree, not merely a seed? Was it when the first leaf unfurled? When roots found their strength? Or when someone, passing by, stopped to notice its presence?

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADITYA S HEGDE

This table is not just wood and polish—it is a gathering of countless lives, choices, and labors. It is a network of echoes converging in this one moment, simply so that I may write upon it. Even here, in something so ordinary, eternity hides itself in plain sight.

Temples crumble, rituals vanish, names are lost—but silence remembers.

The mountain mist had already taught me this lesson. The temple only deepened it. The mist disappears, but its presence is no less real. The temple shifts in meaning, but its essence endures. Its stone does not complain about the absence of prayers. Its carvings do not weep for being reduced to curiosities. They simply are. Perhaps the truest form of devotion is not ritual, but being—remaining as an echo for those who encounter it.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADITYA S HEGDE

As I walked among the carved walls of Halebid, I thought of our own lives. Are we not temples too? Built of flesh rather than stone, carved by experience rather than chisels, worshiped by some, ignored by others. Over time, the rituals of our lives change too. The roles we play today will one day be forgotten. Our names will fade. Yet what remains—if anything—are the echoes of how we lived, what we gave, what we created.

Perhaps meaning is not found in permanence at all, but in resonance. A temple stripped of its rituals can still inspire awe centuries later. A raindrop gone in a moment can still nourish a seed that grows into a tree. A life that ends can still echo in the lives it touched.

Chikmagalur, with its rain-wrapped mountains and timeless temples, left me with this paradoxical truth: we are both fleeting and eternal. Fleeting in form, eternal in echo. The sculptors are gone, the devotees are gone, the dynasties that built these wonders are gone. And yet, here I stood, centuries later, breathing in their presence. They carved not just stone,

but time itself.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADITYA S HEGDE

We vanish. But vanishing is not the end. It is the beginning of echo.

So I return to the mountains and the rain, carrying with me this question: If all things vanish, what do we wish to leave behind as our echo?

We cannot outlast time, but we can resonate through it. The mist disappears, the temple transforms, and so will we. But perhaps—just perhaps—that is enough.

✨ “Nothing remains, and yet, everything echoes.”