Badami, Pattadakkal & Aihole

After a roasting day @ Hampi, the night was spent in travelling to a place called Ilukkal & then to Hungund, where we got down at 2 AM - due credits to the stranger who misguided. But thankfully a co-passenger helped us get an accommodation, and I don’t even remember if there were any dreams, for all I could see was SLEEP!

Badami Cave Temples

The next morning started a bit late; we got into a bus and were at Badami only by 10:30. The super-awesomely cut sculptures in all the 4 caves were intricate & beautiful! The designs patterns on the pillars deserve a special mention.

Just after doing the caves, we got back down & inquired for the route to Pattadakkal & Aihole, and were told that there are ONLY 2 buses each day, and that an auto-rickshaw is the only option. And somehow we bargained to Rs. 600 for Badami-Mahakute-Pattadakkal-Aihole-Badami. And considering the distance, the money seems to be worth.

The first stop was a Naganatha Temple on the way & then a 7th century Jain Temple. 

Jain Temple near Badami

The temple was small & nice, and then we headed to an Amman temple @ Banashankari; and we filled our water bottles there. Temples, hotels & railway stations were the best places for water, food, restrooms, etc!

Mahakuta

We were then taken to Mahakuta, a group of Shiva Temples. Although not very well-maintained, it was quite neat when compared to many others. The best part of this temple was the temple pond where the public were allowed to jump in too, with an entry fee of Rs.2. Irresistible, I jumped in too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made this trip in January and got around to posting about it only now. Oh well, better late than never.

I went to Darasuram with my dad, and visited the Airavateshwara Temple, one of the three Chola temples in the Unesco list. We went to Kumbakonam, and took an auto from there to Darasuram, just 3 kms away. 

Since it was January, the day, although sunny, was very pleasant. The Airavateshwara temple was built by the Chola king Rajaraja Chola II in the 12th century AD. The presiding deity of this temple is Airavateshwara, a form of Lord Shiva. The main mantapa is shaped like a ratha or chariot, drawn by horses. It is believed that Lord Indra’s white elephant Airavata, whose skin had changed color after being cursed by Sage Durvasa, worshipped Lord Shiva here, and had colour restored. Hence the name Airavateshwara. There is another legend, that Lord Yama, the Hindu God of death,  suffering from a burning sensation all over his skin (again after being cursed by a rishi), prayed in this temple and took a dip in its holy pond, and was cured. 

We walked around the temple complex taking some pictures, fooled around with the wide angle lens for a while, and then proceeded to the smaller, but equally exquisite  Periya Nayaki Amman temple, right next door.

When we stepped out of the second temple, a man walked up to us and asked if we would like to watch silk being woven. We obviously said yes and followed him into his workshop just a few buildings away, where men and women were busy dying and weaving silk. It is all on a very small scale, but very interesting to watch.

~ If you are visiting this region, don’t forget to try the delicious rose soda locally known as paneer (tamil for rose water) soda. Super-yummy.

~ There is an ASI-authorized guide in the temple complex - it might be a good idea to hire him - we didn’t, and we regretted it when we saw him do a really good job with another group of toursits.

Madhu Gopalan

Bharathi, Sairam and Ajay at Pattadkal.

So, after completing my first destination - Mahabalipuram, I was back for 2 others - Hampi & Pattadakkal. And one of my friends Maheshwari was too eager to join the trip as well as the GoUnesco challenge! After a lot of primary & secondary research, I arrived at the plan of Bangalore-(Badami-Pattadakkal-Aihole)-Hampi-Bangalore, but on reaching Majestic Bus Terminus by 10, was told that the last bus to Badami was at 8! So, got into the bus to Hospete, the nearest to Hampi.

The bus started by 10:30 that night & we landed at Hampi by 5:30 the next morning, but the buses to Hampi would start only by 6:45. Being a coffee addict I headed for a coffee, while I discovered that Maheshwari was the same with Tea. And we got a share-auto & reached Hampi by 6:45. Starting at 7 AM, the first place to cover was the Virupaksha Temple. The temple was quite serene and welcoming.

Right behind the main shrine, there’s a corner where there’s a pinhole camera made in the wall of a temple, through which sunlight passes through and makes an inverted image of this gopuram fall on another wall! Totally amazed!

Surrounded by the Thungabhadra river & huge boulders of rocks, Hampi is said to be chosen as an ideal capital city. Right next to the temple, there’s Thungabhadra flowing, and one can enjoy the water scream all the way. Btw, Hampi is full of rocks and sculptures; so you might encounter a lot of things like this.

Hampi is not just a city. It’s more like a civilization that has been sleeping in there for half a millennium! We covered the sites as much as possible in a day, but if you’re planning the same, I’d advise you not to. The whole city painted haunting picture, and every site would make you think of it’s state back during the kings’ times. I was too overwhelmed by this and I still am.

The most interesting thing at Vitala Temple or even the whole of Hampi. I’d say, is the Sangeetha Mahal which houses the musical pillars. Literally, *musical-pillars*. Every pillar, on tapped would raise a different sound - horse shoe. bell, jalatharangam, etc. Super awesome,it was! It wasn’t actually allowed, as there were renovation works going on, but the security fella played them for us, on request.

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By this, we were already exhausted & it was 2:30pm! We came to the same place where we had breakfast, and I should say, the lunch was decent too. We even put our heads on the table and dozed for half an hour, thanks to the heat! Then we set on for the next half of the day, which started with the majestic Kadalekalu Ganesha!

The Sun never seemed to set. So did the list of monuments! We felt as if we were in an endless maze of perfectly carved rocks! But somehow covered a few places and once when we were walking like tired donkeys, a bullock-cart passed by and the *driver*, on looking at our state, asked if we wanted to jump in, and we happily did; and that was the *best* ride of the day!

We were left at a junction where there was an underground Shiva temple and the *lingam* would always remain underwater! The whole city was so well planned that there was even rain water harvesting & pipelines all over! But my favorite was the Pushkarani that was designed in the style of Chand Baori, with pyramidal steps!

Then there were Mahanavami Dibba, Hazara-Rama Temple, Achyutaraya Temple, etc. and by then, my camera’s battery went to it’s grave. We went back to Hospete for dinner and were already thinking about the next day’s plans for Badami, Pattadakkal, et al. And for refreshing, we walked around a km to the railway station, got a platform ticket, used the waiting rooms, charged the phones & batteries and finally came out alive! A quick list of notable places: -

• Virupaksha Temple
• Vittala Temple & the Stone Chariot
• King’s Balance
• 2-storeyed gateways
• Matanga Hill
• one might get a view of the whole city, atop this
• Achyutaraya Temple
• Hampi Bazaar
• Kadalekalu Ganesha & Sasivekalu Ganesha
• Hemakuta mountains
• Krishna Temple
• Badavi Lingam
• Ugranarasimha
• Underground Shiva Temple
• Pushkarani
• Lotus Mahal
• Elephant Stable
• Hazara-Rama Temple
• Mahanavami Dibba & the secret chamber nearby
• Queen’s Bath 

On Badami, Pattadakkal, etc - next post. Btw, the overall route was THIS. Might be of some help.

Raghavan

Chola kings and Nilgiri tracks

Shravya, Ankitha and me were ready for a non stop travel experience and the 3 of us started the journey from Chennai. Booking and reaching to the bus stop in the last minute is an epic story in itself. In the end, we ended up boarding an AC bus on a non-AC ticket. If I didn’t know Shravya and Ankitha were chatting all night long, I would have complained that the bus has a noisy engine.

 
We reached Kumbakonam in the wee hrs and headed to find a place to freshen up. And ended up finding a palace.    
After taking half hr to get ready in the candle light (yes, the palace has no power), we headed to Gangaikonda cholapuram. It took us around 45 mins to reach there. It was built by Rajendra Chola (son of Raja Raja Chola) in 11th century after his victory in northern India and I found it interesting that the temple had large walls like a fort. Apparently, we were the only tourists there and there wasn’t anybody inside the temple either, save the few gardeners who kept the surrounds lush green. After spending a while and enjoying the day light, we decided to go back to Kumbhakonam for our next Destination, Airavateshwara Temple. In the meanwhile I managed to spread the song in my head to Ankitha – “Dham gutku gutku…”.

We went back to Kumbhakonam and ate delicious idlys and chutney before leaving for Dharasuram, which is 5 km from there. The sun was already at its best. I felt for the first time what an apple goes through inside an oven. It was easily the hottest day of my life. We finally reached Airavateshwara temple after walking half a mile under the hot sun. Some water melon and palmyra fruits kept us alive. The temple is as huge as the Gangaikonda Temple, but with more tourists this time. We also found a free guide who tried to explain everything that was already evident in the gallery. After some fun time walking around the temple and some photoshots, we were asked to leave as the temple is closed from 1 pm to 4 pm. Next stop - Brihadeeshwaralayam.

We Took a bus to Tanjavur(Tanjore) and got down right infront of the Brihadeeshwaralayam. Feeling weak we decided to have some food and relax for a while. Some AC restaurant would be just perfect, as we tried to hunt down one, we realized that there were quite a few AC restaurants,sans AC because of the 10 hrs power cut, thanks to the power crisis in Tamil Nadu. We finished our brief lunch and headed to Brihadeeshwaralayam. Now that’s a huge temple. It has a grand entrance and a real elephant to welcome people. Built by Raja Raja chola himself, this is the oldest and themost magnificent of all 3 temples that we saw. There were a lot of tourists there and also a large queue for darshanam. Have spent a lot of time, we sat in the grass and that’s when my quote of the day has come – “ants, deep down in my pants” after some laughter - satisfied – we headed to the railway station to catch our tanjore-coimbatore train.

Both Shravya and Ankitha dozed off while I refreshed with a 2 hr nap Reaching Coimbatore as early as 1 AM didn’t help much in finding a place to freshen up. But after amusing ourselves with the experiences we had, we finally got a place to refresh. We took the 5 am train to Mettulapalayam, the base station for Coonoor, Ooty. By the time we reached and stunned with the morning hues on the Nilgiri mountains, we were late enough to catch the 7:30 train. The next train was at 9:00 AM. We spent the time in enjoying the cool weather after coming from the hottest place on earth – Kumbhakonam.
 

The ticket taking process was a bit tedious. We need to stand in a queue to take a token which is issued only after the train of 7:30 AM is left. With that we need to buy the tickets which has another queue. And then comes the final queue to occupy the seats for the unreserved compartment of the mountain train. Thanks to Ankitha, we were smart to get the left side seats, and enjoyed the forests, valley views and an interesting train experience ( it travels at 18 kmph, aprox). The journey was fun with Ankitha and Shravya added more pictures in their cameras. And we sang “Chaiyya Chaiyya” from Dilse.. Heard the song was pictured on these same tracks?!.

As we reached the Coonoor station, the 2 girls got even more naughty irating the train staff there. Quote of the day ” Ye bhi koi chadne ki jaga hai???” yells a frustrated officer running towards us, while I managed to escape looking at the sky trying to count the stars in the day time. We spent some time in Coonoor by having food in a restaurant and doing a little shopping of buying homemade chocolates and nilgiri tea. The return journey over bus was some kind of experience with everybody dozing of while the bus takes the ghat road with hairpin turns. Our Go-Unesco Journey almost ended but we used the time before catching the bus to ride a giant wheel, screaming our lungs out and eat at Adyar Anand bhavan near the Townbus stand at Coimbatore.

 
From Chennai to Kumbhakonam, Tanjore to Coimbatore, mettupalayam to Coonoor, and Coimbatore to Chennai… Overall, it was a wonderful experience travelling non-stop over the weekend and thanks to Ankita and Shravya for making it a memorable one.

Prashanth, Shravya and Ankitha at the Nilgiri Mountain Railway.

Online article here - link

Prashanth, Ankitha and Shravya at the Brihadeswara temple in Tanjavur.

Ankitha, Shravya and Prashanth at Gangaikondacholiswaram.