Chocolate comes from the cacao tree, a plant native to the Americas, and the oldest known chocolate drink dates back roughly 2,400 years to Mesoamerica. Those early drinks were unsweetened and very bitter, because sugar came from Old World plants that had not yet reached the region. Cacao was often mixed with chili and other spices, and its flavour was entirely different from what modern sweet chocolate tastes like. Cacao is now grown across the tropics, mostly in Africa and the Americas, but chocolate making has long traditions in countries where it cannot grow, because cacao beans store well for months. Sweet eating chocolate came later, once sugar became cheap and cocoa butter could be processed into solid bars. English maker Joseph Fry is credited with making the first modern chocolate bar in 1847, and Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter later developed milk chocolate.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.