After spending some weekends idly, I was thinking of another trip around Bangalore – rather South India. As told previously in another weblog, I along with three friends made a trip to Coorg, so I was reluctant to visit any other hill station just now. I was thinking of a trip to beaches like Pondicherry after listening to one of the fellow trainees exp
erience to that place. But as Chennaites told that the mercury was souring high there, I dropped the idea. Other friends came up with ideas of going to Munnar and good old Ooty as well. But the idea of visiting Shravanbelagola suddenly came into our mind and we settled on that.
I had always dreamt of visiting this place when I used to look at the photo of the giant monolith of Bhagwan Bahubali back in my home. But in 2004 when I was in Bangalore for the first time, this could not take place. So I did not want to let this chance go astray. And since other two places – Belur and Halebeedu (known as Halebid also) were nearby; we included those two places as well. All three places are in Hassan district (222 Km west of Bangalore).
The day begins …
We started our day early on Saturday as first bus to Hassan is at 6:30 AM. So we got up at around 4:30 and started for Majestic at around 5:45. As always happened and will happen in future, no sooner we arrived at Majestic than we managed to board a bus. The morning weather was a little bit cloudy and we hoped that it will remain the same over next two days of our journey.
Unlike our journey to Coorg, the bus just rolled thru Mysore Road. In the course, thanks to getting up so early, I slept for almost 1.5 hrs and got up only at Kunigal. I could not relate one of the information written in one of the websites which said the scenic beauty beside the road is breathtaking. But I thought this was a pure case of exaggeration until the bus crossed Yadiyur, when the bus halted for the first time, and for that matter for the last time (you
don’t need more than one halting station for 3.5 hrs journey). From then on the coconut or sugarcane plantations would glisten with the sunrays on both the sides of the road with blue Western Ghat in the background. I had got a local man from Hassan just beside me and he made the journey much more informative. I knew many a things before even I had set my foot in Hassan.
At around 9:00 the bus reached Hirisave which is just 10 KM from Shravanbelagola, our supposed first stop-over. But by that time we had changed our plans, thanks to Deepak - which resulted in pretty good decision. We now planned to visit Belur and Halebid first and then only visit Shravanbelagola. Oh yes... another change in plan was to lessen the duration of the tour from two days to a single day as Sujit had his presentation scheduled on Monday which was yet to be prepared - this also proved to be useful. So we carried on with the same bus to Hassan. At around 10AM the bus reached Hassan bus stand. There a bus was waiting for us for Belur. It left within 5 mins and after one hour of journey thru picturesque geography we were in Belur (40 KM from Hassan) by 11 in the morning. The temperature was quite nice till this point of day.
Belur
There first of all we completed "pet-puja" in the bus stand itself and set for the famous Cha
nna Kesava Temple – also termed as “the Taj of South India”. The Vishnu temple is just seven-eight minutes by walk from the bus stand. As I had read in some website that you will wonder as you approach the temple that "why you have chosen to come here, what is so special about it?" Yes all of us were thinking the same. And it was also said that "After reaching there you won’t think that." Yah... that also we did. At the first sight, it seemed like a dull temple that does not match with our traditional concept of a temple structure - but a flat top temple. But when we went closer to it we found it full of marvels. The color of the structure has changed into 
bluish (like Angkor Bhat in Cambodia) - reminding that it was built in 1100 AD. The marvelous works on soap-stone also justified the time taken by the temple to be completed ... more than a century... 103 years to be exact ... the temple rises from a star-shaped plinth, one of the hallmarks of Hoysala building design. From the base upwards, there is an extraordinary wealth of decorative detail; every available inch is crammed with intricate carvings. Line upon line of friezes form bands around the temple, each depicts scenes from Hindu mythology. In the base frieze, 650 elephants jostle one another in a continuous line.
Apart from the temple, in the premises there is Narasimha Pillar standing all by alone - there is no support to this pillar.
And Ha
lebid …
As the mercury was rising, we decided to move to our second destination - Halebeedu or Halebid (17 KM from Belur) meaning 'ruined stones' in Kannada. We started at around 12:40 and reached the place at 1:10. The place was the ancient capital of Hoysala kings before they moved to Belur when Delhi Sultans invaded their kingdom. This abandonment may lead to such name of the place. The signs of Sultans’ destruction can be seen on the defaced sculptures, absence of idols from places etc. There is a Lord Shiva metal idol (yes, metal - in this place of curved stones!!)
in the temple. There is an adjacent garden as well adding mystic charm to the place. The sun had become so hot that while making “Parikrama” we had to search for shadows to keep our feet. Learning: If you are visiting these places in summer do wear thick socks to avoid blisters in your foot. We returned from Halebid to Hassan at around 3:00 PM.
Shravanbelagola
Our next destination was Shravanbelagola, the place which means – “Monk of the White Pond”. We took a bus to come to Channarayapatna from Hassan. And there are lots of buses from this place to Shravanbelagola. After we reached there we got to know from localites that the gate for the temple closes at 6:30 and it was already 5:45 PM. That means we had to rush. And there were 700+ granite steps to be conquered. The slope was very steep. (Though
it was a great decision on our part to visit this place at afternoon as I thought what would have happened if we decided to come here under scorching sun). Perhaps we hurried a little bit more because of this timeline and it took around only 20 minutes to conquer the steps. But I got damn tired (I was on paracetamols as well) and I had to take a 6-7 minutes break before I could proceed again. But when I reached the top where the 58 feet high monolith statue of Bhagwan Bahubali is located, I was simply awed by the greatness. The face reflected eternal bliss and peace.
The monolith considered to be the world's largest, built by Chamundaraya, a general of king Gangaraya. The base of the statue has inscriptions in Kannada, Tamil and the oldest evidence of written Marathi from 981 AD. The Marathi inscription on the base of this thousand-year old statue is a tribute to King Gangaraya from his general Chamundaraya who had funded the construction of the statue. Every 12 years, numerous monks and shravakas (from this word my caste - “Sarak” has evolved. Click to join Sarak community in Orkut if
you belong there) congregate here to perform the Mahamastakabhisheka, a spectacular ceremony where the thousand-year-old statue is anointed with milk, curds, ghee, saffron and gold coins.
It was already dark when we started descending from the hill. The sunset was worth watching from the top. Facing Bindhyagiri, home of Bhagwan Bahubali monolith, is Chandragiri where Chandragupta Maurya’s “Samadhisthal” is located along with Bhagwan Bahulbali’s brother Bharath’s statue. But we could not visit Chandragiri because of time constraint. Anyway its only 3 hours journey from Bangalore!!
Back to Bangalore …
So with a plan to revisit this holy place again, I left Shravanbelagola for Channarayapatna at 7:30 PM. We boarded our bus to Bangalore at around 8:30 and reached IIM-B hostel around 12 PM completing a very pleasant visit to places with great emotional values to me.
erience to that place. But as Chennaites told that the mercury was souring high there, I dropped the idea. Other friends came up with ideas of going to Munnar and good old Ooty as well. But the idea of visiting Shravanbelagola suddenly came into our mind and we settled on that. I had always dreamt of visiting this place when I used to look at the photo of the giant monolith of Bhagwan Bahubali back in my home. But in 2004 when I was in Bangalore for the first time, this could not take place. So I did not want to let this chance go astray. And since other two places – Belur and Halebeedu (known as Halebid also) were nearby; we included those two places as well. All three places are in Hassan district (222 Km west of Bangalore).
The day begins …
We started our day early on Saturday as first bus to Hassan is at 6:30 AM. So we got up at around 4:30 and started for Majestic at around 5:45. As always happened and will happen in future, no sooner we arrived at Majestic than we managed to board a bus. The morning weather was a little bit cloudy and we hoped that it will remain the same over next two days of our journey.
Unlike our journey to Coorg, the bus just rolled thru Mysore Road. In the course, thanks to getting up so early, I slept for almost 1.5 hrs and got up only at Kunigal. I could not relate one of the information written in one of the websites which said the scenic beauty beside the road is breathtaking. But I thought this was a pure case of exaggeration until the bus crossed Yadiyur, when the bus halted for the first time, and for that matter for the last time (you
don’t need more than one halting station for 3.5 hrs journey). From then on the coconut or sugarcane plantations would glisten with the sunrays on both the sides of the road with blue Western Ghat in the background. I had got a local man from Hassan just beside me and he made the journey much more informative. I knew many a things before even I had set my foot in Hassan.At around 9:00 the bus reached Hirisave which is just 10 KM from Shravanbelagola, our supposed first stop-over. But by that time we had changed our plans, thanks to Deepak - which resulted in pretty good decision. We now planned to visit Belur and Halebid first and then only visit Shravanbelagola. Oh yes... another change in plan was to lessen the duration of the tour from two days to a single day as Sujit had his presentation scheduled on Monday which was yet to be prepared - this also proved to be useful. So we carried on with the same bus to Hassan. At around 10AM the bus reached Hassan bus stand. There a bus was waiting for us for Belur. It left within 5 mins and after one hour of journey thru picturesque geography we were in Belur (40 KM from Hassan) by 11 in the morning. The temperature was quite nice till this point of day.
Belur
There first of all we completed "pet-puja" in the bus stand itself and set for the famous Cha
nna Kesava Temple – also termed as “the Taj of South India”. The Vishnu temple is just seven-eight minutes by walk from the bus stand. As I had read in some website that you will wonder as you approach the temple that "why you have chosen to come here, what is so special about it?" Yes all of us were thinking the same. And it was also said that "After reaching there you won’t think that." Yah... that also we did. At the first sight, it seemed like a dull temple that does not match with our traditional concept of a temple structure - but a flat top temple. But when we went closer to it we found it full of marvels. The color of the structure has changed into 
bluish (like Angkor Bhat in Cambodia) - reminding that it was built in 1100 AD. The marvelous works on soap-stone also justified the time taken by the temple to be completed ... more than a century... 103 years to be exact ... the temple rises from a star-shaped plinth, one of the hallmarks of Hoysala building design. From the base upwards, there is an extraordinary wealth of decorative detail; every available inch is crammed with intricate carvings. Line upon line of friezes form bands around the temple, each depicts scenes from Hindu mythology. In the base frieze, 650 elephants jostle one another in a continuous line.Apart from the temple, in the premises there is Narasimha Pillar standing all by alone - there is no support to this pillar.
And Ha
lebid …As the mercury was rising, we decided to move to our second destination - Halebeedu or Halebid (17 KM from Belur) meaning 'ruined stones' in Kannada. We started at around 12:40 and reached the place at 1:10. The place was the ancient capital of Hoysala kings before they moved to Belur when Delhi Sultans invaded their kingdom. This abandonment may lead to such name of the place. The signs of Sultans’ destruction can be seen on the defaced sculptures, absence of idols from places etc. There is a Lord Shiva metal idol (yes, metal - in this place of curved stones!!)
in the temple. There is an adjacent garden as well adding mystic charm to the place. The sun had become so hot that while making “Parikrama” we had to search for shadows to keep our feet. Learning: If you are visiting these places in summer do wear thick socks to avoid blisters in your foot. We returned from Halebid to Hassan at around 3:00 PM.Shravanbelagola
Our next destination was Shravanbelagola, the place which means – “Monk of the White Pond”. We took a bus to come to Channarayapatna from Hassan. And there are lots of buses from this place to Shravanbelagola. After we reached there we got to know from localites that the gate for the temple closes at 6:30 and it was already 5:45 PM. That means we had to rush. And there were 700+ granite steps to be conquered. The slope was very steep. (Though
it was a great decision on our part to visit this place at afternoon as I thought what would have happened if we decided to come here under scorching sun). Perhaps we hurried a little bit more because of this timeline and it took around only 20 minutes to conquer the steps. But I got damn tired (I was on paracetamols as well) and I had to take a 6-7 minutes break before I could proceed again. But when I reached the top where the 58 feet high monolith statue of Bhagwan Bahubali is located, I was simply awed by the greatness. The face reflected eternal bliss and peace.The monolith considered to be the world's largest, built by Chamundaraya, a general of king Gangaraya. The base of the statue has inscriptions in Kannada, Tamil and the oldest evidence of written Marathi from 981 AD. The Marathi inscription on the base of this thousand-year old statue is a tribute to King Gangaraya from his general Chamundaraya who had funded the construction of the statue. Every 12 years, numerous monks and shravakas (from this word my caste - “Sarak” has evolved. Click to join Sarak community in Orkut if
you belong there) congregate here to perform the Mahamastakabhisheka, a spectacular ceremony where the thousand-year-old statue is anointed with milk, curds, ghee, saffron and gold coins.It was already dark when we started descending from the hill. The sunset was worth watching from the top. Facing Bindhyagiri, home of Bhagwan Bahubali monolith, is Chandragiri where Chandragupta Maurya’s “Samadhisthal” is located along with Bhagwan Bahulbali’s brother Bharath’s statue. But we could not visit Chandragiri because of time constraint. Anyway its only 3 hours journey from Bangalore!!
Back to Bangalore …
So with a plan to revisit this holy place again, I left Shravanbelagola for Channarayapatna at 7:30 PM. We boarded our bus to Bangalore at around 8:30 and reached IIM-B hostel around 12 PM completing a very pleasant visit to places with great emotional values to me.
More snaps from this tour can be seen at
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