CraftsHampi

Go Bananas in the Monkey Kingdom near Hampi

An hour’s drive from Hampi is a miracle village called Anegundi. It falls within the core zone of the Hampi World Heritage Site, declared by UNESCO in 1986. Anegundi is also referred to as the legendary Kishkinda, a forest home to monkeys, as mentioned in the Epic Ramayana.

The heritage site also resides on a 3,000 million years old plateau – believed to be one of the oldest on earth. Apart from these mythical and historical facts, there’s another side to Anegundi, and that is it’s people. The Kishkinda Trust founded by Shama Pawar, has churned out several projects which are meant to help the local community in areas of conservation and business incubation — one of the ventures being the production of various handicrafts from Banana Fibre.

Banana is a popular crop in this region, and the fibre extracted from the trunk of the banana plant along with Shorba grass, river grass and other locally available fibres — once processed– can be used to make some really amazing and colorful handicrafts. Here’s a glimpse of the multitude of products that you would never have imagined could be made out of banana fibre:

 

The toy Monkey made out of banana fiber

“Jai Hanuman.” saw so many of His statues and visited his supposedly birth place today & of course saw lot of monkeys. #karnataka
The brown boxes for keeping those little treasures
The brown boxes for stashing away your treasures
Cute, little banana fiber bags
Cute, little banana fibre bags

Buy local produce, always. These beautiful bags are made from banana fibre in .

Kishkinda Trust Hampi banana fiber 30
Beautiful jewellery boxes made out of banana fiber
Pillows that talk to you -- in parrot language
Pillows that talk to you — in parrot speak

 

Kishkinda Trust Hampi banana fiber 19
Would you believe these lovely paper flowers are actually made out of banana fiber?
Vaali Gufa in , a town just 5 kms away from is truly an unexplored place.
Kishkinda Trust Hampi banana fiber 10
Carry your precious possessions in this pretty little wallet made out of banana fiber
Kishkinda Trust Hampi banana fiber 17
hang out with these sling bangs

All the pictures were curated with permission from The Kishkinda Trust.

Planning a visit to Hampi? Get ready with our travel friendly tshirts, get one for yourself – here!

One thought on “Go Bananas in the Monkey Kingdom near Hampi

  • akanksha

    This is such a well written article on Anegundi, what it has to offer and the efforts of the Kishkinda trust.
    It really is a small piece of heaven.
    Kudos to the team. :)

    Reply

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