Monday, August 18, 2014

Weekend Trip : Heritage Trail...

494 Kilometers in a day, 600 steps to climb, visit to my college, visit to proposed UNESCO Heritage sites more ancient than my Engineering degree...
Why not a one day trip to go back in time?

First the date was fixed as August 9th to beat the traffic outside Bangalore on the next weekend, 15th August, the long one. And my son’s school had a different idea. They called in kids to turn out on that Saturday to compensate for the day lost on the previous week for Karnataka Bandh. Next best option as we three (The Kid, Wife and me) were raring to go was not to wait too long and make it on 15th weekend. We figured out 16th Saturday works well and all of us excitedly were up by 5AM.
This will be a story and to follow it in pictures and shorter stories, visit here. This blog contains links to Wikipedia articles to keep it short and only to focus on the road trip.

I studied for my Engineering Degree at Hassan (160 Kms West of Bangalore) and Belur, Halebidu are places of Archeological interest near Hassan. These two places along with Shravanabelagola (a place of interest for Jains) are being proposed as UNESCO world heritage sites. These places were ruled by Hoysala Kings and famous for star shaped temples with intricate carvings.
We started at 6:15 and as we are a little late, the little traffic caught us till Peenya. Our first search was breakfast and we were very specific on Mayura at Bellur Cross. This is because of a program on Kannada Channel where Mr. Sihikahi Chandru recommended it and my son wanted nothing other than this. Breakfast done at Mayura and proper deviation taken to Shravanabelagola near Channarayapatna and we were there by 10:30.

Who was happy? My son, to see that there are too many steps and he starts running.  The counting and climbing is parallel done and we complete 600 steps in 30 minutes. The Bahubali statue at Shravanabelagola is monolithic and stands at 57 feet. This statue was regarded as one of the tallest Monolith in the world. First visited the statue and then on the way back all the temples were done.

Shravanabelagola to Hassan and a detour at Hassan takes us to Belur. Belur has intricate carvings on the inside while Halebidu has more intricate carvings on the outside. The guides are available at Belur for a fixed fee of Rs. 200 (with receipt). The carvings are amazing to say the least and explained in detail in the photos. Belur has Channakeshava temple which has a Vishnu deity (worshipped till today). There are about 48 pillars of various sizes, shapes and designs with the Shilabalika’s and these are the main attraction here.
Next up was Halebidu which was the capital of Hoysala Empire and 12 KMs to Belur. Halebidu means “old city” as it was attacked by Alauddin Khilji and ransacked twice.

After Halebidu, we proceeded towards Hassan and MCE, my college was the next stop. Half an hour inside the campus (Saturday evening and hence all closed) and we were on the way back to Bangalore. I wanted a piece of nostalgia to feed our hungry stomach and we checked Hotel Sri Krishna Sagar and Hotel Gokul. I with my friends used to frequent these places. Both were undergoing renovation and the new revelation for me was Hotel Parijata at Mallige Residency. From here, it was straight back to Bangalore.

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