Hampi is a worship place in India. Its fabulously rich princes built Dravidian temples and palaces which won the admiration of travelers between the 14th and 16th centuries. It is like an oasis in the parched land of the Deccan Plateau of Karnataka. Within this luxuriant oasis are banana plantations, coconut groves, monkeys clambering high above in giant palms. The placid clear water of the river gently flows and mutters through the rock strewn hills, rounded and crazily shaped, as the huge boulders pile up on one another above the small circuitous road on the far bank that mends its way to a hill summit where a small white temple resides. There are temples and entrances formed out of the huge rocks everywhere. Further along the river is the world heritage site Vithala Temple . The crowded buildings hint at the centuries old heritage of the village, for it is some 450 years since Hampi's dignity came to an end as the centre of the Vijayanagar Empire Hampi was the last capital of the last great Hindu Kingdom of Vijayanagar.