Pachi Bale

It has been a busy week and a much more busy weekend, so could not get to completing the Hampi blog. However, as the weekend involved yet another road trip, i have attached few pics taken during the trip. The road trip was to Coorg, a home stay called as Pachibale Home stay. An absolute delight of a trip, will share a much more detailed travelogue soon. That is 2 travelogues now i need to complete soon. 

Do make a point of seeing the pics full screen.

Hampi

Of the several trips i have been on, over the past few years, i am trying to add pics and their related travelogues in here. The first of such an entry i will be trying to write about is the Hampi trip i went on in Dec 2014.

A detailed blog will follow soon, but to just get warmed up, i am adding a couple of pics from the trip. 

Both the pics give a fair idea of the scale of the ruins of Hampi. The first one here, is the temple complex of Achyutaraya temple, which i managed to take from top of the hill. Do make a point to see the pics full screen.

Here, a pond in another temple complex.

A close up of the structure in the middle of the pond here:

Will create a more detailed blog regarding the trip in the next one.

Amrutheshwara temple

Continuing from my previous blog, here are few pics of the interior and the wall panels depicting scenes from Mahabharata and Ramayana.

The interior of the temple has several rows of pillar that have an exquisite finish almost giving an impression as if, these were done using modern lathe machines. It would be quite hard to believe unless told that these are almost 1000 years old. The pillars consist of 5 separate blocks from top to bottom that have been separately carved and then assembled to form one single unit. Also another interesting observation about these are, that each of the pillars are completely unique from one another in terms of the design it carries.

The Nandi is located right in front of the sanctum sanctorum(Garbha Guddi) is said to be carved so realistically that even the nerves have been included.

Although there were many panels depicting important scenes from Krishna, Mahabharata and Ramayana in the outer walls, we were able to take only few quick pics due to want of time. (we were planning to reach Bangalore by evening)

the below panel depicting Rama killing King Vaali. Vaali had the boon that he would get half the power of his opponent whoever would face him. So Ram had to shoot an arrow standing behind 7 trees while Vali was distracted fighting Sugriva. A small anecdote here, just to show the richness of Indian mythologies, both Ramayana and Mahabharata have several thread that are intertwined. One such thread being, in a form of role reversal of Rama and Vali. To pay the price of this unfair way of killing Vali, In Mahbharata, Krishna who is an avatar of lord Vishnu is killed by Hunter named Jara . Jara is said to be Vali reborn, thus completing the cycle of Karma.

Below a depiction of lord Hanuman revealing himself in front of Sita, who is in captivity in Lanka under Ravana.

A depiction of Kumbakarna marching to meet Ram in battle

Kumbakarna fighting Vanar sena. You can see the Vanars doing whatever they can to bring Kumbakarna down. One of the monkeys who is being squeezed by a hug, appears to be pulling Kumbakarnas ears. While the others vanars are trying their bit to save him, by tickling kumbakarna.

The below is from Mahabharata, the scene depicting Wax Palace being burned down as plotted by Duryodhana

The below depicts a scene where Draupadi is being dragged out by Dushasana in Mahbharata.

Lastly, i leave you with this marvelous one, Supposedly of the most beautiful asurini in Ravanas palace. Her name is Jambu malini. You can see how beautiful she looks merrily dancing, with her beard, and dread locks :)

Shimoga and Amruthapura

Attaching a few pics of places we had been to over weekend while in shimoga. Shimoga is just over 300 kms from Bangalore, and is often called Gateway to Western Ghats. There are several beautiful places that one can travel to and back while staying in shimoga. To list a few famous ones, Jog falls, Honemaradu, Kodachadri and many more. There are several Falls, Forts, temples, hills that one can choose to visit while staying here within few hours distance. The city in itself has rich a very rich history. As one of my aunts stays in this city, i have been fortunate enough to be able to travel here often and covered several of these beautiful places. I will try to write about the earlier trips in separate blogs. Here i am mentioning only the ones i was able to cover during this trip

Sacred Heart Church This beautiful church is more recent addition to shimoga compared to the ancient heritage. You can go visit this place mostly as sight seeing place.

 

Amrutesvara Temple in Amruthapura: This is a very beautiful temple located just about an hours drive from Shimoga. 

There was no official guide present here, but a nice gentleman offered to show us around and speak about the history of the place. He didn't have any official rates as such but mentioned we can pay him whatever we thought was appropriate after he was done showing us around. If you visit here, its definitely worth taking his help as this place is rich in story.

The temple itself was built in 12th century by Hoysala king Veera Ballala II as a mark of respect to his dead general Amrutheshwara Dandanayaka. The story as told by our guide was that this heroic General had fought close to 4 battles here with the local rulers and won each one of them. After the fourth battle, he was killed by treachery while on his way back. The Hoysala King who was close to the general built this temple as a mark of respect. The temple through most of its time of its existence has been known mostly only to locals and remained untouched by thieves or pillagers. It has only very recently(relatively speaking, in the past 40-50 years) been taken over by the ASI to secure and preserve. The temple is still in use and poojas offered to lord Shiva daily.

The walls of the temples have the complete story of Krishna, Ramayana and Mahabharata. The carvings are so delicate, that it almost feels as the artist worked on butter rather than stone the way he was able to carve out the intricate forms to depict the various stories. The inside of the temple consists of several rows of shining lathe finished pilalrs. Its amazing how almost a thousand years back the architects were able to accomplish something of such finesse with the tools of their time.

The below stone depicting the story of Amrutheshwara Dandanayaka. It needs to be read from bottom to top.

I will post in a subsequent blog more pics of panels in the wall depicting the story of Mahbharata and Ramayana.

Sacred Heart Church