[kumarsanthoshkr]

Sringeri / Hornadu/ Kalasa to /Badami / Aihole / Pattadakal

It was almost 6 months that I had added Innova Hycross Zx to the stable and the only reason I had taken the car out was for getting the Puja done and for getting the first servicing completed. I will keep this blog a little fast as the number of places we covered was lot of them.



Part of the reason why the vehicle was not used much was because of myself suffering from slip disc and taking time to recover back and secondly the ongoing work that I had to dedicate a lot of time to. The Christmas week after much deliberation decided to go with family to Sringeri and Horanadu as the first destination. We set off at morning 6.30 AM from home towards the Nelamangala highway on Dec 25th. Entire Bangalore looks like was going out of city and it took us 2 hours to reach Nelamangala which in regular time usually takes about 30 mins. One thing to note was that the comfort level of the car was amazing and though the traffic was slow moving, the EV mode worked perfectly.

Hit the Hassan road and reached Belur quite easily. The drive from Belur to Aldur was little slow owing to the bad roads. Lot of pot holes and I would definitely not recommend this road to anyone. The better road is to go from Belur to Chikmagalur and then Aldur. Onwards from Aldur to Balehonnur and Jayapura and Sringeri is amazing drive. Fantastic twisties which brings a big smile everytime I go on this road. The last one was on my motorcycle which is all the more happiness. Reached Sringeri



Reached Sringeri by afternoon and then spent rest of the evening / night in Hotel called Sharad Comforts. This is the only one which is decent and has clean rooms when compared to the others. Subsequently in the morning went to the temple and check out the fog





Once the sun came, the beauty of the temple was mesmerizing. Spent a lot of time in the temples and then visited couple of more temples on the other side of the Tunga River and the Malahanikareshwar temple. Left Sringeri to Hornadu after finishing lunch



Checked into Mudra Stay in kalasa which is 5 kms from Horanadu. It was an amazing place where we had 2 rooms and a hall and kitchen and fantastic host. We went to the Horanadu temple late in the night at around 9 PM , finished the puja and had dinner in the temple. The temple serves both lunch and dinner. The dinner was simple but fantastic taste. Came back to Kalasa and then next day early morning went ot the beautiful temple in Kalasa itself.






Left Kalasa in the morning and reached back to Bangalore by evening. We dropped the elders at home and slept early in order to go to Badami the next day. The Badami was in different direction. However the highways were much wider ones and it was quite empty roads owing to which the Adaptive Cruise control could be put into the action. This works fantastic with the steering following the lane without manually having to put in any effort. The mileage was close to 20Kms per litre which even small cars do not give.





Was literally blessed to see a lovely sunset while on the NH50 and then we settled down in Badami in night in morpho banashree resort.
The next day we visited the Banashankari temple which is a 7th century temple built by chalukyas



After this we went to the temple which are carved out of the caves. One of the things that I realise is that how easily we have forgotten our history. The cave temples in Badami are nothing short of the petra caves in Jordan.



















With a lot of memorable memories we returned back to on the first day of 2024 back to bangalore. The experience of driving Hycross was amazing feeling no tiredness after an 8 hr drive.

[GTO]

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