Glorious treasures of South Canara - Day3

I know, it is becoming very lengthy despite being split into 3 seperate items to describe these glorious places of south canara. But, I promise, this will be the last post that describes in detail about Udupi, Sringeri, Hornadu and closure of this 4 days awesome trip. Just to remember, at Day2 we were staying in Udupi. In morning we went to Udupi Sri Krishna Mutt. We felt nostalgic. There is a reason for it. I studied and grown up in this divine place :) The city is not just famous for the Divine Sri Krishna temple. But the city is also well known for its overall infrastructure developments and also education and cleanliness. If I have to explain about the beauty and glory of the car street, I can put it as follows.

In the heart of the city, we can see the Car Street where we can spot 8 Mutt which participate in performing all the necessary administration of Sri Krishna mutt for 2years in their term. Every mutt will get their chance once in 16 years. These ashta mathas will maintain the Sri Krishna mutt and its functionalities in their period of service. Every year they celebrate Sri Krishna Janmashtami which is also called as Vitlapindi in local language. There will be huge gathering to witness this colorful festival. Also, for the lord Sri Krishna, they perform lots of varieties of Alankaras including Vajra Kavacha, Gopi Krishna etc but not limited to only these. In navaratra time, they do 9 different alankaras for the almighty. Now let me come back to where I was. After having darshana of my favorite Sri Krishna, we headed towards Sringeri.

Sringeri is located at a distance of around 60KM from Udupi.  The route is very scenic going via famous hill station Agumbe. Agumbe is the place that receives highest rainfall in Karnataka. It is well known for its sunset which is well described by one of the famous songs Agumbeya Prema sanjeya. I feel the photos speak a lot more than words to describe about this place. Here it is.

We could not forget ourselves seeing this greenery though we wanted to because we had to hurry up to reach Sringeri because temple would close by 1.30PM. So, we proceeded to reach Sringeri by 12.30PM. The moment you enter the temple, you feel like surrendering yourselves to the serenity and divinity of this holy place of Sri Sharadamba. We were surprised to see that there was not much crowd at the temple. So, we got the Darshana of The Mother until we were completely satisfied. We got to know that there is one more puja going on in Narasimhavana. So, we rushed to the Narasimhavana crossing the bridge that is constructed across roaring Tunga river. There the puja went on for an hour. Later we headed back to bhojana shala for prasadam.

After having tasty meal, we went to explore the roaring tunga river. The specialty of this river is, you can spot huge fishes waiting to catch the puffed rice thrown at it by the visitors. It is a treat to watch. But, one should be very careful. The river is very dangerous with whirlpool in and around. Better not to try swimming. After spending some time in this calm place, we went to see the vidya ganapati temple. The architecture of this place is very attractive with stone carvings. Here is the pic of the temple.

By the time we finished exlporing the temple, my mother remembered to buy necessary spices, home made food items from the local shops. Shopping went on for more than 45mins. Later we started to Horanadu by around 4.30PM.

The distance is only about 50KM from Sringeri to Horanadu. But it is a proper western ghat section region with curvy and narrow roads. But, the route is so beautiful, you start feeling that the road should never end. You will be going through the road where you can witness many of small water falls, small water streams. The journey through the coffee/tea plantations are really refreshing. For me it is more refreshing than sipping coffee/tea. Let the pictures tempt you also to try this route.

We reached Horanadu by about 7PM. As per actual plan, we were supposed to reach Chikmaglur for overnight stay. But since it was already 7PM in Horanadu. we decided to stay in Horanadu only. There was huge queue for the darshana of Annapurneshwari. The queue for Kumkumarchana was bigger than normal queue. We had to wait for more than an hour in the queue to experience the glory of Annapurneshwari. Annapurneshwari is the goddess who is responsible for fulfilling food for each and every hungry soul on this earth. The place is well developed with accomodation in recent days. So, inspite of so much crowd, we could get the accommodation in one of the lodges near the temple only. The weather was so cold that we needed rugs to shield ourselves from cold. Here is how it looked in early morning.

As the name suggests, we had our dinner at temple. In morning we had breakfast in local hotel and started our journey to Bangalore.

Key informations

Udupi - Sringeri: 50KM, Udupi-Hebri-Agumbe-Sringeri.
Temple timings: closes at 1.30 and opens again at 4PM
Accommodation available in both places in plenty

Sringeri-Hornadu:50KM, Sringeri-Basarikatte-jayapura-Kalasa-horanadu
not much option for food on the way, decent accomodation available in Horanadu.

Horanadu-Bangalore: Around 300KM
Horanadu-Kottigehara-Mudigere-Belur-Hassan-Bangalore

Not much food options till Belur. After that you have plenty.

I hope this series helped you to some extent to plan your trip. Any inputs are welcome.

Glorious treasures of South Canara - Day2

Well, after completing the Day1 like mentioned in the post, we headed for day2. We knew that the day will gonnabe longer. The plan for day2 included visiting Kemmannu - a small village near Nitte for offerings, Maravante, Kollur, Kumbhashi, Udupi.

In morning, we again went for Darshana at Kateel temple followed by sumptuous breakfast at the hotel near Bus stand. The food was very tasty. Then we headed to Kemmannu which is about 30Km from Kateel. Kemmannu is famous for the blessings of Sri Durgaparameshwari. The atmosphere around the temple is so calm and peaceful. One can fully focus their concentration in meditation and get immersed in dhyana. The place has big halls for arranging functions as well. We were surprised to see so many people gathering there for functions or festivals. We had to do some offering The Goddess. Since it was a friday, there was a bit of rush. The main priest came by 12PM and started the Mahapuja. After the Puja, we got tasty prasadam in the temple and then we headed to Marvante via Belman - Katpady.

The distance was about 80Km to Maravante. In middle we stopped at Udupi for fuel. There was road widening activity going on from Udupi-Kundapura highway. Stretch from Kundapura to Maravante was a bit tough since road was completely full of deep patholes for about 5km. Though we all had seen Maravante many times, we still gave a visit to it so that we can refresh ourselves watching the sea along with tasty eatables that we had got.

Maravante is a very serene place along the southern coast of Karnataka. This is situated at around 15Km from Kundapura - Bhatkala highway. Plenty of buses are available from Udupi to reach this place. The importance of this place is, on the left side of the highway you see this majestic arabian sea and to the right side of the highway you can see sweet water lake. The combinataion of these 2 along the side of highway for about 2km makes this place very attractive for the visitors. There are hardly anything available to eat here. You will get coconut water along with tea, biscuits or chips. We finished the stuffs that we had got packed from Bangalore and headed towards Kolluru which is around 30-40Km from this place.

From Maravante we continued further towards Byndoor. To reach Kolluru there are 2 deviations that are available. One is just before Byndoor, and the 2nd one is much much before Byndoor. Unknowingly, we took this deviation since we got this deviation first. The road was very good, but its not very wide. From this deviation Kollur was about 30km. Once we passed through some distance in this road, the road became very lonely inside deep forests of western ghats. Since it was almost 6PM in October, it was all dark, inside the jungle all alone in the road how much ever distance is covered. For almost 20KM we were all alone in this route, finally found someone to ask atleast if we were on the correct route. The gentleman confirmed that we were on right track, and told to continue in the same route for 8KM after which we will reach the place called kalluru from there we can join the main road. We continued as told and found this main road. This is the usual route in which all buses ply from Byndoor to Kollur. Finally we reached the temple at around 6.45PM. Since it was a friday the temple was a bit crowded, We got darshana and had coffee and started to Udupi. We were in such a trauma, that we were so scared to drive in the same forest region to Udupi. But still, we made up our mind and headed towards Kundapura. We were accompanied by few more cars which made the journey less scary. The route was Kolluru -  Vandse - Tallur - Kundapura. On the way to Udupi, we visited Kumbhashi temple. The temple is famous for Lord Ganapati.

At around 8.30 we started to Udupi from there. We were expecting to get a stay in one of the guest rooms of Admar Mutt or Pejawar Mutt. Since it was long weekend, our expectations tumbled. Each and every guest house around temple Car street was fully occupied. So, we had to rush to nearest hotels to check for availability. We checked in hotel Janardhana and others near bus stand. But did not get accommodation. Then we got accommodation in near by hotel in the same tower as Hotel Shanti Sagar infront of Bus stand. As expected, rooms were a bit expensive because of lots of demand. We checked into the hotel and came for dinner at Shanti sagar. This ends day 2 of this 4 days tour.


Important info
Kateel - Kolluru : Nearest route is via Kinnigoli-Mulki-Udupi-Kundapur-Kollur
Lots of option to eat in entire this stretch.
Kundapura - Maravante : No option to eat, better to carry.
Kolluru : decent options to eat, lunch/dinner will be available in temple.
Udupi : Call the temple mutt guest houses well in advance. The guest houses are very neat, near to temple. Also cost effective.

Glorious treasures of South Canara - Day1

When someone talks about South Canara of Karnataka, usually people will think of beaches since it forms the west coast of India. But, as I explored, the glory is not just limited to beaches. It has treasures much beyond beaches. Here is the desription of treasure hunt I made in October season.

After my marriage, my family wanted to complete some of the offerings that we had to make for our favorite Gods. As a part of this, we planned this great trip. To start with, the Shiradi ghat which connects Bangalore to Mangalore was opened just few days before our trip, made me excited to explore this route. As a driving enthusiast, I always wanted to explore this route. Since we wanted to visit temple early in morning, we started from Bangalore at around 4.30PM and drove to Hassan and stayed overnight in Hassan. I had booked Hotel Kadamba Comforts through MakeMyTrip for stay. Totally around 200rp was toll charges to reach Hassan. We had coffee at Adichunchanagiri where usually many KSRTC buses halt for refreshment. We had experienced taste of that particular restaurant before. So, we were tempted to recap the taste. Otherwise, there are plenty of restaurants on the way to Hassan that one can explore. Kamat, Adigas, A2B are only a few to name. It was raining on the way to Hassan. So to be cautious drove a bit slow to reach Hassan by 8PM. It was first long drive for my wife that she alone drove for such long distance in single stretch. The parking space in this restaurant is just ok to park 4 cars. Rooms were quite good with basic amenities. We had light dinner in the near by restaurant and slept off keeping in mind that we should be ready to start by 6.30AM next day to Dharmasthala. This is to beat the huge crowd usually that Dharmasthala temple is known for.

We all woke up by 5AM and got ready by 6.30AM. We had breakfast in the same restaurant we had dinner previous night. Idli was good followed by strong coffee. The destination Lord Manjunatha temple at Dharmasthala was at a distance of 100Km from Hassan. Since it was ghat section and my lust to drive in the newly laid out Shiradi Ghat, I started slowly till Sakleshpur. The road from Hassan to Sakleshpur is single road with lots of humps and curves. Also, at many places curves are so sharp that they are well known as accident prone zones. Once we crossed Sakleshpur, it was all hassle free smooth drive down hill. Here is the pic which was taken as a proof :)

Shiradi ghat

There were many bikers who came as a  rally to ride in the same route. All of them wore similar dress like uniform and were riding their KTM duke at decently slow speed of 80km/hr in that ghat section :D Jokes apart, the road is too good that it lures us to keep pressing accelerator pedal. But we should be aware that we are not the only one who are going in that curvy hilly roads. There are lots of trucks and uphill vehicles which will not be visible in sharp curves until the very last moment. So, better to drive at safer speed in ghat sections.

Usually if we have to cover Kukke and Dharmasthala from Hassan, we can visit Kukke first and then proceed to Dharmasthala. Due to some confusion, we went till Nellyadi junction where I took deviation to Dharmasthala. We reached there by around 9.30AM. My mother wanted to get pious by taking a bath in river Netravati. The river is very pure, but due to large amount of devotees who visit the place, there are lot of litterings around the river and it is not clean enough to take bath. We continued to reach the temple premises, where we were quite surprised because we were not welcomed by huge queue of devotees which is quite common in this holy place.
As the name indicates, Dharmasthala is a place where people have faith, belief and respect for the almighty Manjunatha and his holiness Dr. Veerendra Hegde who is the Dharmadarshi of the great temple. People have so much faith on the God that many a times they come to this place and confess for the sins they had done in past and take an oath to be good from then onwards. Again, just to confirm that we were actually in the correct queue, we checked with the securities and temple office. They confirmed that we were in the right track :) This was  such a big relief for us. We had thought that we will have to wait in queue for atleast 2 hours to get ourselves satisfied with the darshana of mighty Manjunatha. The temple was so less crowded that in fact we went in for darshana twice and enjoyed the darshana for almost 10minutes. As we were heading towards exit, we were told to have anna parasadm, which is available through out the day for the devotees who visit this place. But it was just 10.15Am in morning and we thought we can actually visit Kukke and have food there. We decided to head to Kukke with a remembrance like this.

Dharmasthala

From Dharmasthala, we had to go back towards Nellyadi for about 20km where we took deviation. From that junction Kukke is around 40km. In total around 60Km from Dharmasthala. Lot of KSRTC buses ply between these two places frequently. We reached the temple by about 12PM. The view behind the temple was just too awesome. Temple lies in foothill of famous Kumaraparvata hill. The temple was about to close down at 1PM. So we rushed to temple office and went on to get glimpse of Subrahmanya swamy. There are lot of options to stay. The place is well known for Ashlesha bali which is one of the ritual done to attain blessings of Nagaraja. Here also there was not much crowd, may be because we were there a day before the long weekend begun. However, almighty made our trip more comfortable by giving darshana for longer duration with lesser time in queue :) What else we can ask for when we are heading for such a historical places. After darshana we were waiting for prasadam. Heavy rain was accompanying us until the first batch for prasadam got over. They prepare a kind of chatni which has its long lasting taste. One should never miss an opportunity to taste it. After sumptuous lunch, we had planned to a place called Suryafor the darshana of Sadashiva rudra temple.

When we started our journey back from Kukke, we decided to get down at Kumaradhara river. The bridge built across this river gets submerged by roaring Kumaradhara in heavy mansoon season. Since we went in October, the force of rain had reduced a bit and we could enjoy calm river like below.

Kumaradhara

The road from Kukke till Dharmasthala is just a narrow 2 lane road. But the road and weather conditions just makes you so relaxed that you dont feel like slowing down even in 80 degree curves. These routes are best suitable for those who love to experience the driving skills. We had to go back all the way till Dharmasthala to reach Surya. Surya is a small place near Ujire. It hosts a temple for Sadashiva rudra.

Many devotional places have expensive offerings being specified by the temples and the priests, you can impress this god by just offering a structure made of clay, in return to fulfilling your wishes. The clay structures to be offered once your wishes are fulfilled and what other than the actual clay offerings made by devotees lying in the temple, can give you the evidence of sanctity of this deity. You can make a wish either by visiting the temple or sitting at your home. Once your wishes are fulfilled, all you need to offer is a small idol or doll made of clay that replicates or represents what you wished for. For instance, if you wish for a child, you can offer the replica of a cradle or the small doll that represents the child. One can find thousands of tiny clay idols and structures being offered to god lying near a small place near the temple, which is believed to be the original place where lord Sadashiva Rudra appeared and blessed his devotees.

There are replicas of multistory buildings, cows and calves, cradle, couple, cars, currency notes, even computers and gadgets lying, which are offered by devotees, whose wishes are fulfilled.

Load of offerings made by devotees

After making our offering for successful completion of my marriage, we headed to Ujire where we stopped for coffee. Usually coffee would not taste great in south canara region. As expected we got not so refreshing coffee. Luckily I had taken tea which they prepare well.

It was already around 6.30PM. We still had to reach Kateel which was around 60KM. Though distance-wise it is not a very long distance, the narrow and lonely roads of the surrounding region that makes you feel a bit worried. Constant reminders to drive slow from elders and irritating drivers coming from opposite side without following dim-dip rule makes this route a bit tougher to drive. Until we crossed Belthangadi, there was still day light which gave us motivation to reach Kateel and stay there over night. But as and when we crossed Belthangadi, the stretch till Moodabidri is very narrow and forest region. Though GPS was there to take us in appropriate route, the forest route made us a bit worried until we reached Moodabidri. After Moodabidri, we were pretty close to Kateel. We had seen a luxurious hotel in that small village and was surprised to see the growth and popularity the palce had gained. It all signifies the glory of the powerful Durgaparameshwari.

We went for Darshana at 8PM as soon as we reached the place. The palce is known as Dweepa temple since the river Nandini surrounds this temple. The gushing water under the bridge of the temple makes roaring sounds. The temple is situated in a calm and peaceful place. We were there at such an auspicious time that we could witness the days Mangalarti. In the mean time, we came to know that prasadam is available by 8.30PM. In the mean time, we went to enquire for rooms in the luxurious lodge that we saw before entering this village. But, the class of lodge rooms were not just limited to its building, but also reflected on its rates. So, we enquired and came back thinking of finding some other alternative to have overnight stay. Luckily we enquired helpdesk at Kateel and was very happy to know that temple itself has its guest house for the devotees who come from far places to witness the maata Durgaparameshwari. The rooms are neat with basic amenities for sleep and bath. It comes with a support for wallet too. The temple authority charges just 120rp for a double bed room. However, hot water availability to bath is dependent on solar power. But, the weather was so unusual that we could get hot water even in that rainy season.  We had a comfortable stay at this calm place and enjoyed the Darshana once again and went for prasadam after which we got sound sleep.

The rest of the part of this journey will be published soon.


Important info:

1. Bangalore to Dharmasthala distance is around 280KM via Shiradi ghat.
2. There are lot of eatery options on the way.
3. Check for temple timings before planning the trip.
4. Actual route is Bangalore-Kukke-Dharmasthala-Surya-Kateel for this journey.
5. Check for temple guest rooms before going for other alternatives.
6. Do not miss anna prasadam in any of these temples. If you plan accordingly, you can just get your stomach filled with tasty prasadam in all these temples.