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/

A Plan to Kshetra Karnataka

Be it a Holiday trip or a trekking challenge or a relaxing vacation, it’s always a great feel/reminiscence to write a post about our experience. Whenever I plan for a trip, I always read many blogs, to get info about routes, weather, Hotels, Transport etc. So many blogs had helped me in planning a great trip to Karnataka. I should thank all these bloggers for their useful info. I feel I can reciprocate my gratitude, by sharing my experience too 🙂

I conceived this thought about a trip to Karnataka somewhere around the month of September. But didn’t work on that much. December last week is a year-end shutdown in my organization. Employees have to apply mandatory leaves from 26th to 30th of December. 24th, 25th, 31st of DEC and 1st of Jan being Saturdays and Sundays, we get totally 10 days of rest from work. The plan was to start on 24th of December and return home on 30th of December.

I started plotting the places to visit on Google maps and connected them all using “Get Directions”. I saw a lot of retracing when I connected them initially. Then I formed a logical circuit by moving up and down the destination points[sorry back and forth] in the Google maps and reached a place where there is minimal/no retracing.

Note : Please click on the above image to generate the Google map for you

Day 0 : 24-12-2011
11:10PM – Start by Yeshwantpur Express from Chennai to Yeshwantpur. [Tickets were available only for Yeshwantpur.]

Day 1 : 25-12-2011
6:00 AM – As per prior booking, the cab will pick us from yeshwantpur railway station and reach my father’s Guest house at bengaluru City Junction
8:00 AM – After refreshing, start to kukke subramanya after having break fast
3:00 PM – Reach Kukke subramanya, have dharshan
5:00 PM – start to Dharmasthala
6:30 PM – reach Dharmasthala and check in a Hotel.

Day 2: 26-12-2011
6:00 AM – Have dharshan @ Dharmasthala temple
9:00 AM – Head towards Horanadu
11:00 AM- Reach Horanadu and have darshan
1:00 PM- Start to Sringeri
3:00 PM- Reach Sringeri
4:00 PM- Finish Darshan in Sringeri and start to Agumbe and stay near Agumbe or stay @ sringeri itself.

Day 3: 27-12-2011
7:00 AM – start to Udupi
9:00 AM – Have breakfast in Udupi
12:01 PM- Start to Kollur
3:00 PM- Have Darshan @ Kollur, and head to Murudeshwar
6:00 PM -Reach Murudeshwar and then stay @ Murudeshwar

Day 4 -28-12-2011
7:00 AM – Have Darshan @ Murudeshwar
9:00 AM – Have breakfast and then leave for jog falls
12:01 PM – Reach Jog falls – spend few hours, Have lunch
17:00 PM – start from Jog falls and reach Arsikare

Day 5 -29-12-2011
7:00 AM – start towards Bengaluru after having breakfast
12:00 Noon – Reach Bengaluru and rest of the day for shopping if possible:)

Day 6 -30-12-2011
6:00 AM- Start to Chennai by Lalbagh Express

Watch out my next post for my real experience and photographs. I felt I can split my plan and the real experience in two posts so that post will not too long. Also the readers don’t get bored going through a lengthy post on a blog.