5th April 2009, 22:57
| #16 |
| BHPian  Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Campus @ IIMA !
Posts: 368
Thanked: 120 Times
| Halebidu (contd.) and Hulikere HALEBIDU The Kedareshwara temple...      The Parsavanatha and Shantinatha Basadis. The main idols in these temples are 18 ft tall!         Saw this owl watching us watching him... [in the crevasse under the Myna]  HULIKERE Our next stop was Hulikere, which is a couple of Kms from Halebid. No temple here... just a small but beautiful Kalyani...   This frog swam up to us to say hi!   Spent some time here and drove back through Halebid towards Belavadi & Javagal. |
|  (2)
Thanks
|
| |
|
5th April 2009, 23:11
| #17 |
| BHPian Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Campus @ IIMA !
Posts: 368
Thanked: 120 Times
| Belavadi & Javagal... BELAVADI Belavadi is a few Kms away from Halebidu and there is a huge Veeranarayana temple complex here.    Since there was no power supply, the priest used a solar lantern to show us around the dark insides of the temple...   The Utsava-murthys...           JAVAGAL After Belavadi we headed towards Javagal, which is again a few Kms away. The Lakshminarasimhaswamy temple at Javagal. This again was a temple which was locked when we reached there and we had to trace the priest's house and call him to open the door for us.      The priest was kind enough to give us a bunch of bananas to munch upon and also a bottle full of great tasting teertha. This was a life-saver since it was lunch time and we were really hungry! After spending some time here, we headed back towards Halebidu and onwards to our next destination; Belur. |
|
| (2)
Thanks
|
|
5th April 2009, 23:13
| #18 |
| Distinguished - BHPian   | |
|
|
|
5th April 2009, 23:29
| #19 |
| BHPian Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Campus @ IIMA !
Posts: 368
Thanked: 120 Times
| Belur & Dodda Gadduvalli... BELUR Once we reached Belur I troubled Sangeetha by making her walk round and round the temple with a compass in hand trying to find the exact locations from where the 1850's, 1860's black-and-white pics were taken... "Where is the north west face?", "Where is this view from south?”...     Ancient wooden wheels from the temple chariot...       Intricate carvings...   One last pic of the temple's dwaja-sthambam...  We headed on towards our next stop, Dodda-Gadduvalli, which is around 25kms from Belur, on the Hassan-Belur road.  DODDA GADDUVALLI Found this map on a hoarding on the way, which gave us a good idea about the directions of the places we intended to cover and helped reconfirm our maps...  The Lakshmi temple...  The eerie looking Betalas carved inside the temple...   The temple is located on the banks of a river/lake...    Spent about 45 mins here and headed on towards Hassan. We had planned to stay overnight at Hassan, but since there was still quite a bit of daylight left, we decided to cover Koravangala, which is around 10kms away from Hassan. |
|
| (2)
Thanks
|
|
5th April 2009, 23:41
| #20 |
| BHPian Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Campus @ IIMA !
Posts: 368
Thanked: 120 Times
| Koravangala... A word of caution, the map we found on the hoarding (in the post above) gives an idea about the general directions of the places to visit, but the distances are absolutely not to scale and Dodda Gadduvalli is shown on the wrong road, it is actually on the Belur - Hassan road. We were a little confused since my map differed from the hoarding map... finally we checked with the best GPS system in these areas; a shared Auto driver! Who confirmed that we were indeed on the right track. KORAVANGALA The route that we took to Koravangala lead us directly to the temple and went along a tank bund...  The Koravangala Bucheswara temple...  The Govindeshwara temple which lies in ruins in front of the Bucheswara temple...  Reconstruction was started sometime in the past, only to get mired in a court case and was stopped midway through...  The temple Kalyani, which apparently never runs dry...   The kalasha and the Hoysala symbols (A man slaying a lion) on the Bucheswara temple are still intact. These symbols were once carved on almost all Hoysala temples, but have collapsed or were taken down over the centuries...      The rotating Nandi! The Nandi idol is placed on a pivot and can be rotated 360 degrees. The legend was that once upon a time the Nandi would turn on its own to indicate the success of your prayers or wishes. However these days you have to turn it yourselves and the ease with which it turns is supposed to indicate the difficulty level in your chosen task. Thanks @akbaree for noting this unique Nandi in your log, I was eagerly looking forward to seeing this in Koravangala.  We headed back towards Hassan and enquired at a few hotels that we came across and found that the room rates were almost uniform. We settled down at a place called 'Jewel rock', where the rooms had been recently renovated. They charged us Rs.600 per night for a standard double room.  We freshened up and headed out to get some dinner before logging off for the day. Last edited by hotstuff : 5th April 2009 at 23:57. |
|
| (2)
Thanks
|
|
6th April 2009, 00:20
| #21 |
| BHPian Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Campus @ IIMA !
Posts: 368
Thanked: 120 Times
| Mosale & Nuggehalli MOSALE Hassan, at 6.00am, it was quite exceptionally foggy...  We checked out of the room and were on our way to Mosale by around 6.30am. There are two temples to be covered here, Chennakesava and Nagareshwara.   Close to Mosale...  Temples in the mist...  Drove through the village, parked in front of the temple and while I was taking pics, Sangeetha went in search of the temple priest. This was turning out to be a routine to find temples locked when we reached. Sangeetha would track down the person who had the keys...       It is supposed to be auspicious to look at the Shivaling from between Nandi's ears, i.e. as close as you can get to Nandi's perspective...   The priest of the adjacent Chennakesava temple was a small kid, 'Srinivas', who was chanting all the shlokas quite clearly and walked us in and around the temples...      NUGGEHALLI After completing Mosale we drove back to Hassan and took the road towards CR Patna. Stopped for breakfast at a Kamat Upachar enroute and proceeded towards Nuggehalli. We intended to cover the Lakshminarasimha and the Sadashiva temples. The Sadashiva temple...  The temple was being used for conducting some school exams. I remember going to a temple prior any important exams, this was one step ahead, write exams in a temple!  Oh God! Please let me remember what subject is this?... I don’t remember attending this class at all... must have slept through all the sessions...   The Lakshminarasimha temple...   The stone which talks about the history of the temple...     |
|
| (2)
Thanks
|
|
6th April 2009, 00:43
| #22 |
| Senior - BHPian  | |
|
|
|
6th April 2009, 00:59
| #23 |
| BHPian Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Campus @ IIMA !
Posts: 368
Thanked: 120 Times
| Govindanahalli, Kikkeri, Hosaholalu... GOVINDANAHALLI Govindanahalli was a little difficult to track down; somebody pointed us towards a route that went to a 'Govinahalli', which sounds quite similar. However we were lucky to find this board along the way, which indicated that Govindanahalli was actually a different place, but it was nearby.  After driving through a narrow mud road for about a kilometer, we reached Govindanahalli and found the Panchalingeshwara temple. As usual, it was locked!   Same old story here too... temple locked, found priest/caretaker's house, he was not at home, a lady from his house cae along to open the temple for us. The Panchalingeshwara temple...  This is quite a big temple, with 5 garbagrihas, 5 lingas, 5 Nandis, 5 gopurams, all in a line, inside the same structure...       Took some pics, walked around the complex and then headed off towards our next destination Kikkeri. KIKKERI Kikkeri is on the main Hassan-Mysore road. The Brahmeshwara temple here is special because it has carvings of Madanikas (Dancing girls) like in Belur, however many of them are in pristine condition. The few missing ones are supposedly in some museums abroad. This is a good place to see some intact examples of exquisite Hoysala sculptures. The temple is located on the banks of a river / lake...   Ok, same story... temple locked... Sangeetha tracked down the person who had the key, whose house was a few 100 mts away from the temple... There was some difficulty in opening the temple since there was a big bunch of similar looking keys, finally we were in!   Ok, looks like the board indicating that this is a protected monument needs some protection...    As mentioned earlier, the intact Madanika statues...      Took some pics outside the temple...   We got directions to our next destination Hosaholalu and headed off... HOSAHOLALU Hosaholalu is around 2 Kms from KR Pet. There is a Lakshminarayana temple here that was on our list. The Lakshminarayana temple...    We were also given suggestions to visit a place called 'Kallhalli' which is supposed to have an exquisite 18ft tall Varahanarasimha idol. However there was some confusion about the route and distance etc. So we dropped it. Since it was around 2.30pm by the time we wound up from Hosaholalu, we had lunch in KRpet and headed off towards Mysore/Srirangapatna and onwards to our last destination for this trip; Somanathapura. |
|
| (2)
Thanks
|
|
6th April 2009, 01:19
| #24 |
| BHPian Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Campus @ IIMA !
Posts: 368
Thanked: 120 Times
| Somanathapura... SOMANATHPURA The route from near Srirangapatna to Somanathapura is not in such a great condition and our average speeds were down to the 40s / 50s. We expected that Somanathapura temple would be open till late evening, however the temple shuts down at 5.30pm and we reached the place at 4.15pm. That gave us a little more than an hour to walk around.          We were probably the last visitors to walk out of the temple that day and headed back towards Mysore road. Reached Bannur and took the road to Maddur.  Spotted this sign on the way... As it flashed past us, I thought I had read it wrong, so reversed and drove back to the sign to see that it indeed said 'New York'! I have seen a Singapura near Davanagere, a Timbuktoo on the way to Hyderabad... and now I found a 'New York' around 7 Kms from Maddur on the Bannur road...  We reached the Bangalore-Mysore road and turned towards Bangalore. Reached the Kamat Lokaruchi by around 7.45pm and stopped for a delicious dinner, before returning home. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Where to next ? |
|
| (1)
Thanks
|
|
6th April 2009, 01:25
| #25 |
| BHPian Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Campus @ IIMA !
Posts: 368
Thanked: 120 Times
| |
|
|
|
6th April 2009, 12:07
| #26 |
| BHPian  | |
|
|
| |
|
6th April 2009, 16:20
| #27 |
| BHPian  Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 208
Thanked: 35 Times
| |
|
|
|
6th April 2009, 17:37
| #28 |
| Senior - BHPian  | |
|
|
|
6th April 2009, 20:36
| #29 |
| BHPian  Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 750
Thanked: 91 Times
| really nice travelogue... but I was not able to spot the Trikuta temple. I have to check back where we have seen that. Also I would like to mention Arsikere has the star shaped entry hall, whereas all others are one or more rectangles. I am attaching the floor plan of Arsikere, you can see it also comprises of two squares, but super-imposed on an angular way.  P.S. Do you think a person/group with no local language skill can take up this trip? (In light of communication needed for directions and/or opening the temple and/or to know the history?) Last edited by arindamray : 6th April 2009 at 20:42. Reason: added P.S. |
|
|
|
6th April 2009, 21:13
| #30 | |
| BHPian  | Quote:
| |
|
| (1)
Thanks
|
 |
Most Viewed