Before going to India this past December (2024) I had already done a lot of research and had a rough idea of where to go first, and what to do next, even though I wanted to keep it flexible, as things on the ground may be different from ideas on a map, or made in the comfort of my study.
And so it turned: I had planned to go to Phanigiri Hilltop Monastery as the first destination, but someone wanted to come with us to our second destination, Kanaganahalli, but only had a few days, which meant we couldn’t go somewhere else first. We therefore went to Kanaganahalli, which, as I explained elsewhere, didn’t work out as hoped.
After the failure of Kanaganahalli, we headed next to Buddhavanam, and then on to Andhra Pradesh and the east and north for a couple of weeks. We kept getting farther away from Phanigiri. Then at the end of the trip I realised we had missed Anupu, which was near Buddhavanam, so we had to rush back over there for those photographs.
We were then getting close to departure time, and we figured we could just about squeeze in two sites on the way back to Hydrabad: Jaggayyapeta Mahā Stūpa (which we had to climb over a fence to access), and Phanigiri (if we had time). Fortunately, we did think we had time and although we arrived after lunch in the heat of the day, we climbed up the sheer granite face, and through the open gate into the walled-off remains on the top of the hill.
The site was very overgrown and – like a lot of the sites we had seen on the trip – was rather uncared for, with just one employee (at least on that day) who chased up the hill and showed us around a little. The site is positioned overlooking the surrounding agricultural fields, and the stūpa when it was still standing must have been seen for miles around.
We did the photography at the site, and then the attendant told us there was a shed-museum at the foot of the hill. I didn’t know about that, and didn’t expect it to be much. Even seen from the outside it is pretty uninspiring, but when he rolled up the doors to let us in, inside were really amazing artifacts that had been preserved from the site.
Although this was unplanned we spent a good while in the museum and photographed the broken toraṇa remains, statues, and other artifacts which had been buried by the monks when abandoning the site. Although the monks probably thought to preserve the items until they could come back, that never happened and instead they remained buried until they were dug up by the team from ASI.
As with everywhere we went I wish we had had more time, but it was already late and we needed to get back to the Mahā Bodhi Vihāra before dark. Phanigiri was the last major site I visited and photographed on this tour. It was meant to be first, it came in last. But it was a wonderful experience.