🇮🇳 Badami Bangalore – Sandstone & Sanskrit

• Notable Routes: Sloper 7b, Fridge 7c+ (no send)
• Stay & Logistics: We stayed in a room hosted by Umesh where climbers often stay. Contact Ganesha who is the best PR guy for Badami

We spent our first week in India in the rural town of Badami in South India, known to tourists for its impressive Cave Temples, and known to climbers as perhaps India’s best sport climbing. It is close to the legendary bouldering and spiritual nexus of Hampi.

If Hampi is India’s best Bouldering area, Badami may be India’s best sport climbing area (albeit much more recently developed and thus less well-known and lacking the Chris Sharma caché). South India is an understated, simple and rad climbing area. The rock is solid, clean, well bolted, hard-enough, easy-enough, shaded, convenient and engaging.

Boasting over 300 routes (up to 5.14💥) and dozens of climbing areas, we didn’t even scratch the surface. The rock is high-quality hard sandstone and reminded me of Red Rocks crags in Vegas. We only visited the Temple crag, named because there is a Hindu temple nestled deep inside the canyon crag which boasted dozens of high quality routes and is still being actively developed.

There is a very well organized group of local climbers @climbingbadami that coordinates guiding if you are in need of a lesson or simply want gear and a talented belayer to take you on a tour of the best routes. A magnificent young man named Ganesha is the de facto figurehead of the Badami climbing scene. He has lived in Badami his whole life and goes out of his way to help tourist climbers get set up to get the most out of their stay. He also took the good climbing photos 📸 in this post!

We could have spent a month or longer in Badami. It was the most friendly, welcoming place we visited in India and also extremely affordable. @climbing_backpackers proved that you could live here on $5-10 a day. Still, we lived comfortably for about $25-50 a day (much more affordable than most of the major cities in India).

Badami is accessible by a 12hr overnight train 🚂 from either Mumbai or Bengaluru. You can sleep comfortably on these sleeper trains for a premium ($15-25pp), making it easy to pop over to Badami if you are on a tight schedule or even if you just have a weekend.

We met a lot of really awesome people, real genuine gems. Ravi bolts routes (hard routes), guides, often saying “it’s easy bro.” I met Subbu on the train to Badami and hi reputation precedes him as a mountaineer, paraglider and rad guy. We also met fellow travelers/climbers Liv, Tom and Felicia. 

We had some grand times at the cave temples, learning about the tantric happy couples carved into the columns of the temple to divert bad energy away from the main deity. Umesh our landlord/guru led us in yoga sessions on the rooftop every day at sunrise.

I can’t recommend this place enough (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) and can’t wait to come back! I am so grateful for the warmth and generosity we received from the small town. Namaste 💕

Links: Badami – Mountain Project Temple Area – 8a.nu

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