Trip to Kshetra Karnataka – Day 1

I was longing to write this post for a long time. At last after a long gap, I forcefully found time to blog. It is always a great moment to think back and cherish the experience when we write posts about our own trips.

I had heard lot about Sringeri, Agumbe and Kollur from my parents and uncle. They keep telling about their childhood trips to these places and their experiences to me. My uncle told Sringeri is a place where a snake held its expanded hood as a sunshade for a pregnant frog which was about to deliver. Frog and snakes are deadly enemies. But the place is so pleasant that it kindled love and affection between the two and such is the greatness of this place. Also, in the story of Sarasavani and Adi Sankara, this is the place where Sarasavaani[avatar of Saraswati] got established. I remember the kannada phrases my elder uncle told about agumbe. “Nakkare dhanthatha bomme, athare aagumbe”. It translates as “she looks like ivory statue when she laughs and she looks like agumbhe when she starts crying”. Agumbe is the highest rainfall prone area.

I woke up around 7:45AM and rushed to switch on my PC. I opened the browser and hit the busiest site from 7:45AM to 8:30AM. I checked the time and it was 7:53AM. I clicked on the “Plan My Travel” in the irctc.co.in page and booked a Tatkal ticket to Yeswantpur Railway station from Chennai Central for me and my parents. Two days prior to this I had spoken to my brother and got contact of a travels in Bengaluru. My dad has booked the return ticket couple of days back, as I have already planned the places to visit and accounted for some cushion/buffer time. The one thing that we didn’t plan was the place of stay or hotels. We had some advantage of this but had tough time too, which you would come to know as you read further. However the order of travel was planned and also the stay at Bengaluru was confirmed as it was on my father’s Railway Guest House.

I took a print out of the map and the tickets and we are ready set go. We reached central far ahead of our boarding time. I asked mom, if she wants a cup of coffee before we board the train? We never say NO for coffee(Good coffee of course). [This was the last time we had good coffee in the total trip.] I held three cups of coffee from saravana bhavan in Central station and we boarded the train. I suddenly felt a jerk in my pant pocket. It was a sms confirming the cab booking. They had sent me the driver’s number and name. I called up immediately Mr.Manjunath and confirmed him our travel and asked him to come over to Yeswantpur railway station the next morning around 6:00AM. I made him come 15 mins ahead of us, as I know, no cab driver arrives on time. The train reached Yeswantpur on time and as expected the cab driver has not yet reached. I gave a call to him and he responded he would be in the station in another 10 mins. He reached the station after 20 mins. We boarded the vehicle and my dad asked him to drive to his guest house which is just next to Bangalore city junction. He drove the 6km stretch in about 10 min and we reached the guest house. We quickly refreshed and within couple of mins we were ready for our breakfast. Now I realized how fast things are if my sister is not with us. lolz….

I asked Manjunath, about a good hotel to have our breakfast. He suggested Sri krishna bhavan which is just behind the guest house.We took a fast and light breakfast there. Manju had no clues other than the info that the trip is for 4 days and we want to visit some places like Dharmasthala and Sringeri. He drove to a petrol bunk and fueled the cab. I noticed that we were tracing back the same route that we took from Yeswantpur. I asked Manju about the route. He told, sir we should go via Yeswantpur again. He accelerated the vehicle as soon as we reached the highway. He asked me “sir shall we take the Nela mangala toll route?” I told him, to take the route/road that he would feel better and safe. Soon the speedometer crossed the acute angle and it started touching 90kmph. The road was awesome and smooth. Manju started talking to me about our native, work, college, tamilnadu, chennai, so on and so forth. He moved well and never felt boring.

He suddenly saw the printout of the map I was having in my hand and tried making something from the contour seen on the printout. He then asked me, so you have planned to go to Kukke subramanya first? I nodded my head and he had a bigger map of karnataka in his rack which he gave to me. I asked him, how long will it take to reach Hassan? He told, it would take around 3-4 hours. It was around 11:00 AM when we crossed Hassan. On the way he stopped at Shravanabelahola and told me “this is my native place”. I have heard about this place and the deity. The deity is Gomateeswara[often referred as Belaka ummachi @ my home.]. This is a Jain temple following Digambar custom. My mom and dad stayed in the car. I rushed to the top of the hill climbing the 1500 steps and took couple of photos and rushed back to the cab asap, to keep the plan in tact, as this was not included on our plan earlier. In around 45 mins I am back in the cab. We took tender coconuts [This place is very famous for tender coconuts]. My thirst got quenched and my stomach started feeling chill.















I asked Manju, where can we have our lunch? He told, the ghat road starts at Sakleshpur and that is the place where you would see some decent restaurants. By around 1:00 PM, we reached Sakleshpur and quickly had lunch over there. Mom had horrible curd rice and myself and dad safely had meals. Soon, we headed towards Kukke subramanya. The cab moved through a small railway bridge and manju pointed me, and told this is the the train route from Mangalore to Kukke subramanya road. He also added, you should once travel by train from Mangalore and you will enjoy the journey through thick forest and enjoy the natural beauty. Soon we passed through a river. I turned towards Manju, and he told me “This is KumaraDhaara sir”. My mind immediately associated with lord Subramanya. Oh ok. Thats why this is special for lord Subramanya. In about 10 mins we reached kukke subramanya and we rushed in thinking we might have a big queue. To our surprise the temple hardly had few devotees. We had a nice dharshan. Haan one think I forgot. In kerala and karnataka, In most of the temples, you will have to remove your shirts before entering the shrine. It is really adorable that they strictly follow this custom to maintain sanctity of the temples.

We had coffee along with Manju in Kukke and soon headed towards Dharmasthala. Now mom told, Dharmasthala’s deity name is manjunatha swami. Now I realized why this is a very common name in karnataka. We reached Dharmasthala around 6:30 PM and Manju asked us, if we would search for a hotel and board the lodge? I asked mom, if we could visit the temple now. Mom’s instantaneous response was a “YES”. No one really worried about anything. Soon we were on the queue. My estimated Darshan time was around 1 hour as the queue was moving fast. The queue seemed like a never-ending road as we progressed. There were several school students behind us. They were rushing, pushing and playing around. They keep bypassing queues and playing around and they were really entertaining us. I started talking to a college student a native of karnataka who stood before me. I asked him why was it crowded and he told me about the rush during pradosham and Maha shivratri. He told, the rush we were seeing then was nothing. I am sure, the rush then would be more or less like the Tirupathy during bramhotsavam. Atleast tirupathy had some vacant rooms with seats to make pilgrims comfortably sit, when they are waiting on the queue. Suddenly we noticed a big crowd coming out of a room in batches and my mom told it was Free food scheme that Dharmasthala has. I would like to mention that, every temple in this stretch has this free food scheme and I felt very great about Karnataka, or in fact felt proud about India.

After 3.0 hours of wait, at last we entered inside the sanctum sanctorium and had a great darshan. One thing which I have to accept is that the happiness that gushes in getting a darshan after so much of waiting has no words to explain. The difficulties/waiting that we underwent was nullified in a fraction of a second and some joy or happiness starts to blossom in the heart quickly.

Soon we were out of the temple and Manju was waiting for us with the car. He asked me if we should rush to find a Lodging as the time was already 09:45PM. But on the other side, everyone was feeling Hungry. But we didn’t mind the hunger and continued to search for Lodges. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any room/Lodge. I kept running zig zag across the road to find accommodation. But no help. Its my bad that I didn’t pre-book the Lodging. Now mom told, “when you are traveling with your family how could you go on such an assumption”. I now felt really bad. My dad told “worst case, we would get into the car and sleep da”. I cannot imagine that situation. I continued my search again. Now, I got a different answer. They told, all the lodges in Dharmasthala are full and they told me, “If you have cab, you can travel to “Ujire” and try your luck to get an accommodation there”. Soon we were heading towards Ujire. Its a 5 km drive down the hill. I forgot to mention, “Right from Sakleshpur its full of ghat roads till now”. We reached Ujire in couple of minutes. We kept rushing from Lodge to Lodge again to find accommodation. At last I found a lodge with some room availability. When I spoke to him in English, he responded “Only kannada” and moved on to next customer. I told my dad “It seems they would give accommodation only for kannada people”. Then some one near me replied me in English. “Sir you misunderstood, he told you, he can only understand kannada not that he wouldn’t lend rooms to you”. At last we managed to grab a non-AC room there and my heart and mind filled with peace and joy.

We entered the room and left again for our dinner to a Jain Dhaba nearby. We were served with Akki rotti and pooris. We came back to room and soon we were asleep.

Day-2 continued here
https://ravikumarv.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/trip-to-kshetra-karnataka-day2/