THE TEMPLE TOUR

It’s been a long time now since Harsh and I have been planning to go for a trip, and we did a lot of enquiry about Agumbe, the rain forest; the home of The King (I mean the cobra). But unfortunately last week we could not make it due to some health problems. But then guess what, we are now at a hotel near the KSRTC bus stop at Mangalore. YES!, last Tuesday as usual the game changer Navnish entered into our plans and routed the trip to Mangalore instead of Agumbe. For a change we left our trusty steeds in Bangalore this time.

Last night we went to the bus stop and took one of the KSRTC’s 6 wheeled glories to Mangalore. After enjoying some Tulu versions of Mohabbatein songs, bad roads and two punctures we finally reached Mangalore at 7.30 AM. Ohh!! we are ready to move. Bye..

Finally, the day ended at 11 PM. After knowing that Aswith our trusted friend and chauffer for the trip will be taking another one hour to reach here, we proceeded for “pet puja” aka breakfast. Many things got tasted followed by the tea. The Mysore masala dosa and neer dosa were good and tingled our taste buds, the taste of the samber was out of the world. Even after the elaborate breakfast we still had some time left for Aswith to come, so we dropped ourself into the nearby mall. While we were at the mall, Aswith joined us.

From there we went to the Kadri Temple in the one and only Indian designed auto-mobile “The auto”, as Aswith's car was going to take some time to get out of the service station. We spent some time at Navnish's aunt’s home and took some photographs.

After collecting the car from the service station, we left to the Mangaladevi Temple  followed by the Gokarnanatheshwara Temple at Kudroli.

Mangaladevi Temple

Gokarnanatheshwara Temple at Kudroli

Gokarnanatheshwara Temple at Kudroli

Gokarnanatheshwara Temple at Kudroli

Gokarnanatheshwara Temple at Kudroli

Gokarnanatheshwara Temple at Kudroli

It was now around 2 PM, and we stuffed our stomachs with some delicious ice creams. The ice creams were mouth watering and real good value for money.

Harsh, myself and Aswith

The Gudbud at Pabba's

After the visits to the various abodes of The Creator next was a trip to one of HIS creations Nature itself. We moved to the Pilukila Biological Park and spent some good time until evening. We wanted to witness the sun set, so right after that we routed our self to Tannirbhavi Beach. Even though we did not spend much time, as the beach was lonely, we enjoyed ourselves and had some good photography time. Immediately after that, we dropped ourselves on to the sands of the Panambur Beach. Aswith's cousin Srikanth joined us there. After spending some time at the beach, we moved to a small hotel for some snacks.

Pillikula Biological Park at Mangalore

Pilikula Biological Park at Mangalore

Tannirbhavi Beach at Mangalore

Tannirbhavi Beach at Mangalore

Navnish

Ashwith

Tannirbhavi Beach at Mangalore

Tannirbhavi Beach at Mangalore

Panambur Beach

We made our way to the top of the Kadri Temple again to experiment long exposure shots and this time we also visited the matt on the top of the temple. Finally at 11 PM we came back to the hotel room. It's winter here too, but I have to take a bath now. Tomorrow have some big plans for travelling to some more famous temples. We planned to start by 7 AM.. Good night.

Kadri Temple in the evening.

Finally, the day ends with a hectic schedule. But we were lucky enough to complete all the temples. In Contrast to the original plan, we got up at 8 AM and made ourselves ready by 9 AM. By that time Navnish and Aswith reached the Hotel. Quickly we made a check out from the hotel and routed ourselves to the Kateel Temple. In another hour we reached the Kateel Temple. We visited the temple followed by a nice breakfast, where we almost tried every item of the hotel. It was fun to eat together all the items placed on to the table. We ate a stomach full of breakfast and again unlike Bangalore it was good value for money.

Kateel Temple

Kateel Temple

Breakfast place at Kateel

Next destination was Moodabidri (Mudabidri) Jain Temple. Even though we were not allowed to do photography inside the temple, we did our job. Believe me it is a nice architecture inside. Right after that we drove to the Kantheswar Temple at Kanthavara. The specialty of this temple is the color of the god changes three times a day i.e morning, afternoon and night. Next we reached to Karkala Jain Temple, where we had to take the steps to reach the hill top. On the top the place is open with a big statue of Jain. It was around 12 noon when we reached there and the rocky mountain top was boiling at that time.

Moodabidri (Mudabidri) Jain Temple

Moodabidri (Mudabidri) Jain Temple

Moodabidri (Mudabidri) Jain Temple

Moodabidri (Mudabidri) Jain Temple

Moodabidri (Mudabidri) Jain Temple

Moodabidri (Mudabidri) Jain Temple

Kantheswar Temple at Kanthavara

Kantheswar Temple at Kanthavara

Kantheswar Temple at Kanthavara

Karkala Jain Temple

Karkala Jain Temple

Karkala Jain Temple

Karkala Jain Temple

Now it was time to move to Dharmasthala. We were lucky enough to complete the darshan in 20 minutes; generally takes people half a day for darshan. We had to remove our shirt to enter to the temple, which was a first for me. Once again the same thing; all items of the hotel were there on our table and we made our tummy very happy. Right after that we went to a museum nearby where we saw a lot of old timeless beauties. Relax guys I am talking about cars. You should have seen the cylinders and the Horse Powers that these beauties churned out. Add to this the size of these cars, bigger than the SUVs. We also went to Gometeshwara the jain statue, which is very near to Dharmasthala. On the way to Uppinangady, we vistited to Southadka, the open ganesha temple.

Dharmasthala

Dharmasthala

Market at Dharmasthala

In a shop at Dharmasthala

Near the museum at Dharmasthala

At the hotel at Dharmastala - Goli Bhaje

Gometeshwara

Southadka

Southadka

After that the plan was to go directly to Subramanyam, but due to some work, we had to spend some time at Upuna-angadi. Once we were done with that, we left for Subramanyam. We reached there at around 8 PM. Thanks to the lord the temple was still open and empty. We took half an hour to visit inside the temple. It was around 9.30 PM we left from there and still we had to travel around 55 - 60 Kms to reach Ashwith's home. It was a narrow, one way road and we took almost 2 hours to reach Kavu. Just before Aswith's home on the high way, we hanged out at one place for food. Myself and Harsh spent some time capturing the stars on the terrace of Ashwith's Home, but were not very successful, as we did'nt have our tripod to place the camera. Navnish and Aswith had already hit the sack. Harsh also slept and we had to return back to Bangalore tomorrow. Good night. Lights off.  Ajj ki raat...aaaaah!! another scary story..

Subramanyam

It is 3.30 AM in the morning and we just reached Bangalore now. We left Ishwarmangla at 11 AM and took the local bus to reach Kavu and then Sulya. We let one bus to Madikeri pass, hoping to get a direct bus to Bangloare. But no luck. In the same bus to Bangalore, we paid more to reach Madikeri. At Madikeri we had settled our stomachs down first, and then found out there was no direct bus, until after 7.30 PM. So we took a local bus to Bangalore. As the bus was not going to Majestic, we only booked our tickets till Mysore. We were hungry, but still we took one of the Volvo’s from Mysore to Bangalore. At around 12, we reached Bangalore and the bus left us at the satalite bus stop at Mysore Road. We were disjointed and came to Majestic. Luckily, we got a bus to Airport Road. We picked our bikes from the Navnish's shop and came home. A last word of thanks to Roweena, she cooked for us.