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

A Rainy Day!

There are few things more beautiful than a rainy day. Especially if you come down to Udupi\Mangalore or any of the sleepy coastal towns along the Konkan\Western ghat stretch. The canvas here is always painted with every possible shade of green during the rainy season and constant downpour just makes you fall in love with this place. This is unlike a heavy rain in Bangalore or bigger cities elsewhere, which bring the whole city to standstill, and people only end up cursing the weather out of sheer frustration, rather than enjoying the weather.  The overflowing gutters or stink that follows a heavy downpour can make you hate even something as beautiful as rain in big cities. But these sleepy and laid back coastal cities however are probably much better equipped to deal with such heavy rains, simply because these rains are part of life of these cities.  Mind you, the rains in these coastal towns are much heavier compared to Bangalore. It just doesn't rain, it pours here.

Rainy seasons have always meant heavy downpour in these places, and the basic infrastructure that these cities have, handle these rains much better than any major cities. This lets the people enjoy the heavy rains here, in the only ideal way this kind of weather should be enjoyed, by just sitting back with hot cup of coffee and plate full of  bajjis or onion pakodas and take in the beautiful show that nature puts up, the cool weather, the soothing sound of rain, with the trees adding chorus while the wind blows through them can be absolutely relaxing for any one.  Dont believe me? better plan a trip to one of these places to see for yourself then :)

Hogenakkal Falls

Hogenakkal is a falls located in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu around 180 kms from Bangalore. The waterfalls is on the river Kaveri. It is one of the more popular waterfalls in southern India and has been included in several popular movies. Its often called Niagra of south India and you would remember seeing the water falls in the songs Dil hain chota sa from the movie Roja, Raat ka naasha from the movie Asoka, etc.

Our group of friends planned it as a day trip with lunch being planned as  pot luck(each family preparing 2 different items). The group consisted of 7 families(16 people) and we had 4 cars. We planned to start off from Bangalore early and have breakfast on the way somewhere near Hosur. 

The route we took was via Krishangiri and Dharmapuri cities. The route map we followed is: 

There are 2 alternate routes that google map shows, but although they seem to be shorter distances,  the time taken is much longer than the one via Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri. So we decided to go via this route. The Roads all through from electronic city to Hogenakkal falls was good and makes for a very pleasant drive.

We started off from Bangalore only by 8 am, with unusually high traffic at the silk board junction for a Saturday morning, but this eased out once we took Hosur road. Of the 4 cars in our group, 3 of them had already had a head start of 20-30 mins from us. The plan was to stop for breakfast after Hosur city and that is where we all catch up. The group chose Krisna Veg Restaurant, which is approximately  20 kms (20-25 minutes) drive from Hosur City or 42 kms (40 minutes) drive from electronic city. This is located near a HP petrol Bunk and also houses a Mc Donalds on the same premise. The breakfast here was absolutely a delight. Idlis were quite soft, vadas crispy, chutney & sambar served with these were very delicious. The butter dosa tasted heavenly while the masala dosa were crispy and tasty. To top it off, a cup of aromatic hot coffee. Overall the breakfast here should definitely be on your list if you are driving anywhere close by to Hosur. I am including the google location of the place to make it easier to find :)

After a very heavy breakfast, we resumed the drive to Hogenakkal. The drive for the most part is on NH7, till we reach Dharmapuri, where we need to take the exit from NH7 and make a right to join the state highway of Dharmapuri - Hogenakkal Road. The road here is also in quite good condition and after around 43 km you will reach the water falls. The drive takes you through several small villages and forest areas and overall is quite pleasant.

Something that we came across on the way to the falls! To give you an idea about the scale, you can try finding a kid hidden away in the pic!

We reached Hogenakkal by around 11:30. After 5 mins of driving around in circles we found that the cars can be parked closest to the falls in a parking area of Hotel Tamil Nadu \ Youth Hostel and we need to walk towards the falls after that.  The parking area is quite large and they charge around 20 Rs for parking.

One of the things planned as part of the trip was belated birthday celebration of  Jayant. He organizes most of our trips with impeccable precision and is generally the reason that we have been able to keep on visiting new places so very often. So it was decided prior to the trip that the best way to celebrate his birthday would be with the whole group during this trip. After reaching Hogenakkal, the first order of business was for us, was to have him cut the cake. The back of one of the cars was quickly turned into a surface where the cake could be kept and cut and we were all set for the celebration to begin.

The whole group, at least the ones who made it to this trip. The group consists of more folks, few who couldn't make it to this trip.

After the cake cutting and once everyone had their share of cake, we were all set to proceed towards the falls. From the parking area, its only few minutes walk towards the Kaveri river and you need to walk by a small alleyway with several shops selling fried fish,  to get there. This seemed to be a common sight here, folks selling fried fish. The sight of  fish with its deep red masala and the very strong smell of the oil in which it is fried in, is what greets you as soon as you start walking towards the river.

Once we reached the river, we noticed that there were proper concrete bridges constructed across the river that will take you to several falls that dot this place. Hogenakkal is not one single falls, but a series of water falls, each one accessible by different means (either walk across the bridges, or through coracle rides). We initially decided to take the bridge to see where it would lead before taking the coracle rides. Walking though this bridge the other common sight was folks being given oil massage. This seemed to be quite popular here, with a large number of people getting oil massage done . Several rocks jutting out of the river have been turned into temporary shacks for such massage parlors. The sheer number of people here showed how popular a place this seemed to be with the locals, the sight was similar to a Mela. Another common thing seemed to be of women washing clothes and men taking bath in the river. Not a pretty sight.

Walking through we made across first to what seemed to be a metal hanging bridge. It turned out that it provided a view to one of the falls, and we had to pay 5 Rs toll to get onto this bridge. The other end of the bridge was shuttered down and seemed to be leading into forest area. So the bridge seemed to only serve as a view point. The Hanging bridge is perched safely on top of the river but like all other places here, seemed too crowded and also slightly bulging down in shape due to the crowd. From here we had a clear view of one of the falls and it seemed majestic in its flow. We had to patiently wait for people to walk out, before we had sufficient place for us to take group pics.

Falls visible from the Bridge

Hanging precariously on the Hanging bridge!

Photo ops done, we decided to head back to the place where we started from to take coracle ride. All around this place, you will keep coming across a lot of monkeys that have grown so used to humans that they will not be afraid to walk right upto you and snatch any food items right out of your hand. So make sure if you are carrying any thing, it is well strapped to you. (cameras, purses) This was also a sign of what was to come later in the day for us. 

Once we were back at the start, we had to now bargain for the coracle rides. This happens to be a very frustrating activity, as most of the coracle guys seem to have ganged up and they offer rates which are way higher and contrary to the rates that are displayed as the official rates. These guys offered to take us around all the falls for  960 Rs per coracle, whereas the official rates mentioned were 100 rs per head. The reason given for the higher rates was that it didn't cover all the falls. Without really much of an option as there was no one else who seemed to be offering lower rates, we had to finally agree to exactly the rates they had asked for.

The Coracle boats are small bowl shaped boats, made primarily of bamboo frames and waterproofed by using hides of animals, or more often these days plastic sheets. The water proofing is further enhanced by a layer of tar. Avoid wearing white or lighter shades of shirts, as in few cases its possible that while sitting in these boats, you end up getting some tar on your dress. These boats have a capacity to carry 6-8 people. We were given 3 coracles for our group. Interestingly each coracle was provided with only couple of life jackets and we were assured that the rides were safe enough and we wont ever need the life jackets. 

The coracle boats took us across the river upstream to the what seemed to be several islands that have been carved out by the river. Once at this place, we had deboard the coracle, and walk to the view points while, our boatmen would manually carry the coracle on his back and walk to the next place where we would need to board back onto these boats. It is definitely what we would call "back breaking" work for these guys, with the coracles weighing atleast 60-70 kgs. We walked to the view point and again were greeted by another majestic view of a different falls. This one much closer than the previous one we had covered. We could feel the spray of the water from the falls, showing how powerful the flow of water was at this place. 

After few minutes at this place, we had to walk to another point on the same island where the boatsmen were waiting for us with their coracles. This time, we had to climb down stony stairs cut quite steep into the rocks. Once safely back in our coracles, our boatsman started rowing downstream. Here the river runs through a narrow gorge with the steep granite rocks on both sides of the river. You can see at several places here, gaping holes in the sheer granite rocks formed by the powerful flow of the river. Although the granite rocks which stretched several meters high above us and looked like formidable walls and were quite intimidating, our boatsman informed us that these would get fully submerged when the mighty Kaveri river was at its full flow during rainy season.  Also what was interesting was, one side of the bank was Tamil Nadu, and the on the other side Karnataka.

Rowing downstream he brought us to another island where we could have spent an hour playing in water. But as it was already around 2 pm and we had yet to have our lunch, we decided to let it pass. From what we could see still sitting in the coracle, this island had sand bank, more like a beach and again several folks selling fried fishs and other snacks. At this point, our boatsman asked us to decide if we wished to be rowed back upstream and back to where we started from, or he offered to take us to another very beautiful falls which he said he could directly take us to a place close by where we had parked, saving us time. The catch was, he wanted us to pay 500 rs more as this was longer route and there was quite a stretch where he would have to actually carry the coracle on land to walk upstream.

Enticing as he made it sound, we fell for it and asked him to take us there although we were quite hungry by now. He proceeded quickly to the Karnataka side border and we had to from that point on walk for almost 1 km before we came across another bridge which he told us would take us to the falls. Fortunately for us, there was a lady selling fruits we pretty much bought out everything she had. Once we had made sure she didn't have anything more to sell, we proceeded to see the falls which our guide had spoken so highly about. It turned out to be a damp squib. As there was not sufficient water, it was definitely not as majestic as it could have been i suppose. Maybe after heavy rains, this place would have been beautiful, but unfortunately not on the day we were there.

Bit frustrated we headed back and from there as we had walked upstream all this time, the ride back was downstream mostly through calm river with not much more to talk about. He dropped us back close by to where we were parked, after which we had to grudgingly pay him 500 rs. He still had the nerve to ask us for tips.

It was 3 pm already and we had not had lunch yet. Once we reached back to our cars, we decided that we will drive a bit outside the city to avoid dust and the crowd and then stop to have lunch. After 10-15 minutes of drive we found a clear patch where we could park our 4 cars and sufficient space for us to stand and have lunch, we immediately parked our cars and proceeded to setup in one of the cars all the items that each one of us had brought.  Just as we were about to start having lunch, the trouble started. Several monkeys started coming our way, initially they were curious, but once they figured there was food to be had, they grew more and more aggressive to the extent that we had to throw away few of the plates we were having food in so that the monkeys would go after these plates instead. As there was not going to be any place nearby where we wouldn't have any monkeys we decided instead to take turns to have lunch. Few us would remain standing, while few would fill their plates and get into their respective cars to sit and have lunch. All the while the monkeys kept roaming in our midst to see if there was more food they could get. All this adventure, meant we finished our lunch only by 5 and were glad and relived only after we had left from that place after cleaning up the clearing. What we did miss out unfortunately in all this was to sit and enjoy the delicious lunch prepared by each of the families.

The drive back was mostly event less and we managed to reach back Bangalore by 8 pm.

I hope we plan the pot luck once again, this time at someones home instead so its much simpler to sit and enjoy the food. :)

Overall the one day trip is definitely good. The only thing i would recommend is better negotiate with the coracle boatmen for good deal, if at all that is possible. Also, if the state government could better manage this place then it would be a much better tourist attraction.