Trip to Kshetra Karnataka – Day2

The next day morning we woke up early and within couple of minutes we are all ready set go for our next destination. Manju was already waiting for us. It’s now, mom told there is a Gomateeswara temple here near manjunatha Swami temple and we headed towards it. Mom couldn’t climb Sravanabelahola, so she was interested in seeing this, as this was having relatively lesser steps. We all climbed the hill within couple of minutes and had a nice darshan there. When we reached the top of the cliff, we found some cars and taxis there. Only then we came to know there is a road path to the top of the cliff. We told this to Manju, when we returned to the car. On the way back to the lodge, we visited the Ram mandir near Ujire. This mandir has an awesome outlook and was neatly maintained. There were several sannidhis such as Gayathri devi, saraswati, Ganesha, hanuman, ram seetha lakshmana, so on and so forth. It had a separate space where all the navagrahas are placed with their respective chariots/vahanas. We then headed to have our breakfast. We went to Hotel Mavanthoor Residency, as everyone suggested that this would be a good choice, but only to get disappointed. The Idlies were horrible and the sambar was worst. Manju had some “vegetable bath” and everyone synchronously nodded to leave the hotel and move to a better hotel to complete our breakfast.

Soon we were out of the hotel and a small hotel in opposite grabbed our attention. Appa on seeing the pooris stacked there, told we would go to that hotel. We all nodded as we were sure, however bad the hotel/food be, it would still be better than the one that we had at Mavanthoor. We had pooris and took hot vadas freshly prepared after waiting for around 15 mins, then paid the bill and headed towards Horanadu. The combined bill was still less than 200 for four of us. We reached Kalasa after a journey of 2-3 hours. We visited the Kalasa temple and as I told, even here there was some Annadhanam going on. Pilgrims were taking plates and taking paayasam. Mom asked me, if we should go get it. I told her, as we are heading to Horanadu which is famous for Anna poorani, we should certainly take food there and so we decided to skip it here. Around 11:30 Am, we all started to Horanadu. Its another 15-30 mins travel. On the way we saw swarms of vehicles and concluded we can get darshan only around evening if we join the queue now. But we didn’t mind anything, as we have already taken a heavy breakfast, no one was really hungry and we entered the temple as soon as possible to join the queue. To our surprise, we had darshan twice within 10 mins and soon we were on our queue in the Annadanam area. I asked thrice, should we really wait this much time for food, having got darshan so quick?

At last we decided to stay on the line. After 20 mins, we were all made to sit on cement slabs laid back to back on a big hall. The hall had a big photo of Annapoorani and can easily accommodate around 300 people. The temple had 3 or 4 such big halls. In a fraction of a second, one person kept the plates, the other one a tumbler and the other one filled it with water. The mega climax here is how they served rice. One person kept moving the trolley having the rice and there were two persons who kept serving rice for two rows facing each other. They served in a rhythmic fashion. The speed of the trolley and the speed at which these guys served made me say awesome. The moment the rice was served, there is another trolley in which sambar was brought and served in the same fashion. Although I shouldn’t call it as sambar [chilly+tamarind hot water]. But in our hunger, it didn’t taste that bad. But the payasam they served was awesome. Unfortunately, they didn’t serve it much and no chance of asking it again as already people for next pandhi are already waiting in queue.

After our meals, we came out and to our surprise, now the queue was till the outer entrance. We then purchased coffee powder there, as my aunt had told to get her a kg. We then headed towards the cab. I told Manju to have his lunch there. But he told he would have it in Sringeri. We then headed towards Sringeri. This was the best roads with best sceneries. You will forget your own self in the nature’s beauty. We reached Sringeri around 5:00PM. We went inside the temple and inquired about Thorana Ganapathi, as I had to offer my special prayers and thanks to him. We then had nice darshan of Saradambal and the Tunga river there. The Tunga river had lakhs and lakhs of fishes of varying size and the pilgrims were feeding it with pori. We then offered our prayers to Thorana ganapathi. You can offer modhakams made of sugar by paying Rs.100 or Rs.200 and take the prasadam home. Thorana Ganapathi here is very powerful and he blesses you with all wishes you pray for.







Soon we came out of the temple and I asked Manju if we can reach Agumbe before the sunset. We know we are already late. Agumbe is 20 kms from Sringeri and the sun set here is very famous. The sun sets in between two cliffs. I had only drawn pictures on my K.G.s like a sun setting between hills but never witnessed one. So was very eager to see that. Manju tried his level best in driving at his best speed possible on ghat roads. We reached the place around 6:30pm and we could only see the whole sky painted in red. It was like “Harathi sprinkled on the whole sky for the Surya bagavan”. I then realized, if this itself is damn good, how would the sun set be? I decided to come here again. There is no wonder why Sarada devi got stumbled and stopped here seeing the natural beauty. Without God’s will you cannot enjoy his creations too. I pray god to give me a chance again to witness sun set @ Agumbe.

We took Agumbe route to reach Udipi. In another 2 hours we reached Udipi. After a marathon search in udipi we atlast found accommodation in Vaishali lodge in outer. It took us around 3 hours and 25 kms of drive to find one. We then went out to have our dinner. It took another 2 hours to finish our dinner, as the restaurant had poor serving. Meanwhile, we went to the temple and checked out the timings and there were lot of sevarthis. There was some dance festival going on. We decided to wake up early and reach the temple as early as possible in the morning. We then came back to room and had a nice sleep.

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/

Extremes of chennai – Photowalk on 8th of May 2011

All ready set go for the next day and I went to bed. I came out of my dream and then slowly opened by eyes after hearing the loud bang of my alarm. Soon with great enthusiasm in the morning I went to wake up my sister. Within half an hour of time, both of us were ready to start our journey for the day. I had fully charged my android mobile, in which I had already set the maverick destination to Talanguppam the previous day by feeding in the latitude and longitude of the place accurately.

The first destination was around 28 kms from my home. We started from adyar sharp at 4:00AM as planned and took the beach road after taking a U turn around the corporation grounds. We stopped the bike near the Napier’s bridge and took few snaps.

I switched on the GPS on my mobile when we reached beach station and took the suryanarayana road to reach royapuram. Then we continued on the state highway 114 to reach Kasimedu. As soon as we took the surya narayana road from beach station, we could find trucks lined up in a queue. When we reached Kasimedu, we gotta feel that we were very near to the sea. It was around 4:20 AM when we reached Kasimedu after crossing the Chennai Harbour. Trucks aligned in a never ending queue were waiting for the Harbour gate to be opened. We could actually hear the sound of waves. At a place where we could find a gap in between the trucks in queue, we peeped out to see the shore. To my surprise, the sea was just 5 meters away from the shore.It was then My sister asked me, what if a Tsunami strikes now? It was then we really understood the magnificence of the nature and its unlimited mercy over us.

Then we crossed the Tiruvottriyur and then continued on SH 114. The road was full of ups and downs. The road was absolutely dark and we could hardly find any lamps. I stopped my vehicle near a temple on the road and pulled out my mobile to see where exactly we were and to know the target distance. It showed the distance as 6 km and I confirmed we were on track. I asked my sister whether to proceed or to wait until the sky becomes a bit bright. She was keen on capturing the sun rise at Talanguppam. So we proceeded on the same road. After traveling for another 2 kms, we found a board reading “Thazhanguppam” and an arrow pointing upwards. It was then I understood the real meaning of the place. People screw up the meaning by their horrible spelling when they transliterate in English. Then we started to proceed on the same road.

2 more kms, we could find the waves of the sea gushing on the stones and the rocks. The sky slowly became brighter and we decided to park the vehicle and capture the dawn here. The scenery is so beautiful and the whole place is silent except for the sound of waves. My cousin sister is ready with her DSLR and I had my cannon powershot(I know its chota compared to the DSLR). slowly the whole sky became red and the sun started playing hide and seek amongst the clouds. We started taking photos and it is then we understood nature is to be perceived(natural) and capturing it as a photo can never get you the real feel of it. Some sort of happiness started blossoming within us. I don’t have words to explain the total scenery!!!!



We then proceeded further to reach the beach of Thazhanguppam. After reaching the beach, I parked my vehicle in one of the houses there and ensured it was safe. Then we moved towards the beach and saw the beautiful vanishing piers taking us into the sea. We clicked as many pictures as we could until we felt it is sufficient enough, so that we get couple of good ones from the pool of photos. We then met some of the police officers on duty there and they asked us where from we were coming. Then the police officer started explaining about the movies that were shot at that spot.

After spending half an hour there, we started our way back to marina. On the way we snapped couple of photos of war memorial, marina, vivekananda house, Santhome church and reached mylapore.

We had a nice breakfast in Saravana bhavan and headed to Mylapore temple. Then after spending couple of minutes, we headed to Mamallapuram via ECR. We took some photographs of Tiruvanmiyur beach, Pattipulam beach and the beautiful ECR road,Tiger caves before we reached Mamallapuram. A day’s time is not enough to see mamallapuram. As our theme is different we didn’t spend much time there. By this time, the glucose and the energy bars that we carried ran out of stock. Eventually we had to rely on the road side shops selling tender coconuts, water melon and ice apples to keep us safe from getting dehydrated.

Around 2:00 o clock in the afternoon, we started our journey back from Mamallapuram to Adyar. On our way back, I asked my sister if she has enough patience to go to one more place and then I suggested about “Dakshin chitra”. Dakshin chitra is situated on the ECR road next to MGM traveling from Adyar. If you wanna see/know the traditions and culture of south india, this is the place for you. We reached dakshin chitra around 2:30PM. We thoroughly enjoyed the puppet shows that depicted the story of vali,sugrivan and hanuman from ramayana and some of the live pottery makings and weaving of silk sarees here.

We took couple of pictures and started our way back to home as we ran out of energy. We had planned to start to broken bridge near besant nagar after taking a nap for an hour or two. But never knew that the nap would extend to a sleep. All together the total trip was around 200 kms. I think, I found a nice way to spend time on a week end.

Extremes of chennai – Plan for a Photowalk

I was feeling tired and bored at office. So started browsing through the photos posted in the “I luv chennai” group in facebook and was fascinated by the way they were taken. Suddenly a thought flashed in my mind, why not to go roam around chennai for the whole day and capture whatever we encounter. I immediately called my cousin sister(doing her B.Sc Electronic Media) and shared my thought. She immediately agreed and we decided to do a ground work on this when I return from office. Then I started browsing the photos again. Then I continued browsing through the photos in a faster pace. But suddenly my hand stopped clicking the mouse and I pressed the back button to go to the previous photo. I was surprised to see the photo. It was nothing but “vanishing piers” of “Talanguppam”. Suddenly I got a feeling is this really in chennai or somebody posted this photo by mistake in this place. But the name seemed to posses a tamil or a malayalam origin.

The next step is obvious…..Google where this place is……OMG, this is part of north chennai near ennore….I have been to ennore only once as part of Industrial visit during my college days. Then I opened google maps to exactly spot the location. It is then I strongly decided to cover this place as part of the photo walk we gonna do that week end.

I shared my thoughts about talanguppam, with my sister and then she told me that she had already heard about this place from her friend. She immediately said this is part of our plan. Then we started jotting down the list of places we gonna cover as part of the photowalk. Talanguppam, Kasimedu, Royapuram, chennai central, city center, thiruneer malai, mamallapuram, and list goes on and on. Then we came to a mutual agreement that the list was exhaustive and cannot be accomplished in a day. Then we decided to stick on to the coastal chennai and obviously by now you would have guessed our starting point. Yes our plan was to start our photowalk from Talanguppam from north chennai and proceed till mamallapuram (south of Chennai).

We prepared a excel sheet with a table of places in our plan, distance and the travel time in bike. The photo walk was planned on that Sunday. So we had enough time on Saturday to plan. I started browsing for the routes and the distance in the Google maps. We also have to decide about where we gonna have our breakfast and lunch. My sister then reminded about the TV commercial for glucose where the sun sips out the liquid from the boy’s head through a straw. We know about chennai’s hot weather(furnace). We procured few glucose sachets and energy bars to keep up our energy levels and to avoid dehydration.


The other thing is the glucose for my bike….Yeah I fueled my bike for Rs.500 and this is one of the few times when the needle of my bike’s fuel indicator has touched the right most extreme. All ready set go for the next day morning. We planned to go to bed a bit early as it is going to be a long day. I set the alarm in my phone to 3:30AM. Our plan was to start by 4:00 AM in the morning and our first destination is Talanguppam.

To be continued in my next post…..