Thirunarayanapuram (Melukote) and Shravana Belagula Trip

This is the first post in my Blog.

Started with a lengthy post!

Hope you have the patience to read the post completely.

I planned to visit Thirunarayanapuram a lot of time but was not able to realise it for the past 4 months. But atlast, the plan got implemented on 13^th June’09. After few Yes, No and confusions from some of my friends here in iiitb, myself, Balakrishnan and Jithendrian finalised to go.

We started from iiitb at 4:00 AM(13^th June’09).

This was our tentative (but unrealised) plan.

1. Go to majestic from electronics city
2. Take any bus which goes to Mysore and get down at Mandya
3. From Mandya, take a bus to Melukote
4. Finish the dharshan at Thirunarayanapuram and return back to Bangalore
5. If possible, visit Mallur Krishnar temple in the return.

But the trip was something different. Have a look at the map showing the route which we traveled.
How Shravana Belagula got added in the plan and how we ended our trip in an unplanned manner is an interesting story which I will tell you all in quite a while.

Before that, if some one wants to know, what Thirunarayanapuram is, please go through the following links

1.http://www.acharya.org/kshetra/tnpuram/MelkoteHeritage.htm

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melkote

E-City to Bangalore:

No bus flying between Tamilnadu and Bangalore minded our hand waves. The Qualis and Sumos which usually save Bangloreans were also not going to Majestic that time. So we got into in a Qualis which was going to Hulsoor and got down in Silk Board. Thanks to the driver. Not just for dropping us in Silk Board, but also for helping me brush up my limited Kannada knowledge. We had a 1 day of non-Tamil and non-English day ahead. I am the Kannada expert (!?) among the three of us.

From silk board, we got another Qualis which was going to Majestic. So far so good!

After having a cup of coffee, we boarded an Airavat bus to Mysore at 5:30 AM.

Bangalore to Mandya:

This journey was smooth and comfortable. We reached Mandya by 7 AM. We had our breakfast in Mandya Bus stand.

Mandya To Melukote:

There was bus timings schedule nicely written, but everything in Kannada :). Don’t know what is the bus which goes to Melukote and when it leaves. Enquired all the conductors over there and the reply which I got from everyone is “Baarathe” (வருது means ‘Coming’). In which platform and when will it come? No one had the answer. Bala and Jithu got settled with ‘The Hindu’ and ‘Times Of India’. I had no mood to read them.

I was just waiting for a sound ‘Melkote’ from some one.

We atlast got that sound. Yes, it was a bus to Melukote which came around 8 AM.

Mandya – Melukote route was a single road. A pleasant village travel. We reached Melukote at 9:30 AM. The ‘Yoha Narasimmar temple’ gopuram in Yadavagiri hill welcomed us.

Now I will tell you, how Shravana Belagula got added in our plan. Just a few metres before the Melukote bus stand, we saw a sign board saying ‘Shravana Belagula’ is 30 kms from there. Myself and Bala decided to go there despite Jithu’s dilemma. We convinced Jithu that it was just another 1 hour travel (you will come to know later that it was not just an hour travel) and we won’t be able to plan a separate trip for Shravana Belagula later. Lets complete this area! That was the idea driving us.

We enquired the conductor about buses to Shravana Belagula. The conductor said that there are no direct buses to S.Belagula from Melukote and he advised us to go to K.R.Pet (Krish

narajapettai) which is 26 kms from Melukote and then take a bus to S.Belagula from there which will cover the rest 4 kms. So we made it our plan and got down at Melukote.

Thirunarayanapuram (Melukote):

We straight away started climbing the hillock since it was already late. The steps were tall enough to stain our legs. Who is the engineer who constructed it? :P

We went over to top and there were around 20 people outside the temple. Hoof! The temple entrance is closed. OMG! Is the temple timings already over or is saturday holiday for temple? :) Started thinking crazily.

A guy there told us that the temple will open at 10AM and relaxed us. One added info. That guy spoke in tamil :).

Yoha Narasimmar Temple:

The temple was opened at 10:20 AM (Indian punctuality!)

We stood in queue.Myself and Jithu were allowed to go near the main deity. We used(or misused?) our Iyengar communal background. Since we were with ‘Thiruman’ and not wearing shirt, a bhattachari there called us ‘Vango Swamy’ and sent us inside.I have nothing to say about the deity. Neither did I watched the idol closely and nor was I interested to. My profile description will say why.Then we got Puliodharai and Laddu prasadam, for Rs.5/-:)

Cheluvanarayana Swamy Temple:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheluvanarayana_Swamy_Temple

This link will tell more about the temple.

The crowd was relatively more.

Myself and Jithu didn’t get any special treatment here. Bala was happy! May be,Bala

would have used (or again misused?) his Iyer background if we had gone to some Shiva sthalamJ Just kidding!

Then we went to Ahobila Mutt Brindavanam being shishyas of that mutt. A lot of h

ype about that was given before going there. But we didn’t

find anything special over there or we might not have explored it well. Sondha madam aache! Epdi vittu kudukka mudium? :P

We had lunch in a small hotel at 12 noon.

Nothing more to see in Melukote. So started to S.Belagula.

Melukote to KRPet:

We went back to Melukote bus stand and waited and waited and waited for KR Pet bus. A couple of buses came that way. But all of them went to Mandya only, not KR Pet. But we got the same reply which got in Mandya, earlier. “Baarathe”

We were tired of standing. So no other go, we sat in the bus stand soil floor. One b us came and we readily came to knew that it was to KR Pet. The name board

had “ K R” in English. Thank god! They didn’t write that too in Kannada. We had a short nap in bus.

As that melukote bus conductor said, it was just 26 kms away and we reached KR pet in a

n hour. After getting down, we enquired the ppl over there for S.Belagula bus.

KRPet to S.Belagula:

Now comes the shocking news. A person in KRPet bus stand said that bus frequency between KR Pet and S.Belagula is very low. So he advised us to take a bus to Chenrayapatna and from there to take a bus to S.Belagula. He also asked us to return back again to Channarayapatna from S.Belagula since there are lot of buses to Bangalore from there. That was not shocking. But the shocking news was that S.Belagula is 40 kms away from KRPet. OMG! We couldn’t believe it. Yes, that conductor in Melukote bus was right in the fact that KR Pet was 26 kms away from Melukote. But his statement of asking us to cover the rest 4kms by taking another bus from KR Pet was wrong. That route actually brought us away from S.Belagula. Look at the figure.

Blue – Correct route

Red - The route which we took

But we are not sure whether that correct route had any bus transportation. Whatever it may be, having taken a step forward, we didn’t want to step back. So we decided to visit S.Belagula at any cost.

So as instructed by that person in KRPet bus stand, we took a bus to Ch.Patna and from there took a bus to S.Belagula. We reached the land full of Jain monuments at 3 AM.

Shravana Belagula:

This is a place famous for the gigantic Bahubali statue.

There are two hills (or hillocks) here opposite to each other.

1. Chandragiri

2. Vindhyagiri

First we climbed up Chandragiri. It was hot. So we were losing our energy after every 20 steps.

But we gain backed all the energy after climbing up. The entire layout at the top of Chandragiri was awesome. Great sculpture works.

Then we climbed Vindhyagiri. Got awestruck on seeing the 17m high Bahubali statue.It is the tallest monolithic monument in India.

We got down from Vindhyagiri at 6PM, had a dosa and coffee.

We took a jeep back to Chenrayapatna.

As the person in KRPet bus stand told, we got a bus to Bangalore immediately after stepping down Ch.Patna. We boarded the bus at 6:45 PM. Bangalore is 144kms from Ch.Patna. The conductor told that the bus will reach Bangalore by 10PM. We were satisfied that we finished the trip successfully without too many problems except for the KRPet misguided route. But that was not the end of problems.

Chenrayapatna to Bangalore (A horrible travel):

The bus was going slow and stopping in many places. Some of the passengers were shouting at the driver. After travelling for an hour, rain started pouring heavily. It was one of the heaviest rain I had seen. The driver stopped the bus in a motel even in that heavy rain. The bus started again after half an hour break. The bus top had some leakage in the back. So the back seat passengers (including we 3) suffered due to the drizzling inside the bus. But we were not in our local place to shout at. So we were enjoying even that. Bala and Jithu started sleeping. I was hearing Ilayaraaja’s Thiruvasagam.

On one side, the passengers were constantly shouting at driver. At some point, the argument between the driver and passengers got worse that the driver stopped the bus in a place called Kunigal and said that he won’t drive any further. It was raining outside. What a human being he is! He didn’t even care that there were small babies and ladies inside the bus.

All of us had to get down. And what kind of human are Bala and Jithu? They were still

sleeping :). I woke them up and we got down. We don’t know what to do next. But we felt hungry. So decided to eat ‘Pakoda’ and ‘chips’ while the other passengers were worrying about their later half travel to Bangalore. We were not worried at all. After all we can sleep even in any platforms.

After a long wait, a Bangalore bus came in that way. We boarded that bus and that bus was driven even slower. But no one was ready to create rivalry with this driver too.

You know when the bus reached Bangalore? At 12 midnight. It was drizzling in Bangalore when we got down. No umbrella. No Jerkin. All the buses were completely packed. Not even a space to travel in footboard.

Again a Qualis wala saved us. He dropped us in e-city (though the charge of Rs.30/- per head was twice the charge usually collected). We reached college by 1 AM.

End of a trip which gave a lot of experience to us.

Note: It took almost 2 hours for me to draft this document in MS-Word and more than 2 hours to put it in blog. I am poor both in drafting and blogging. I pray that I don't get fed-up and make this my first and last post.

Hope to write more!

See you all soon!

Sorry for this long post!