शान्ताकारं भुजगशयनं पद्मनाभं सुरेश
विश्वाधारं गगनसदृशं मेघवर्ण शुभाङ्गम् ।
लक्ष्मीकान्तं कमलनयनं योगिभिर्ध्यानगम्यम्
वन्दे विष्णुं भवभयहरं सर्वलोकैकनाथम् ॥
After bowing down to the feet of the almighty Lord Vishnu, I will start sharing my experience of this beautiful and divine place Kere Thonnuru which is near Pandavapura. This place is located at a distance of around 130km from Bengaluru in Mandya district. In my blog about Melukote at the end I had mentioned about plans to visit Keretonnuru. So, it was a long pending item in my list of places to visit. In the long weekend I had, instead of planning for a long distance travel attractions, I planned for this long awaited place. Join me in celebrating experience of this divine destination in this blog.
We started at around 9am from home thinking that we would take around three hours to reach the destination. But we were proved wrong. All big thanks to the Bengaluru traffic + long weekend crowd to make it even worse. Though we stay at the edge of Mysuru road, it took more than an hour to cross Bidadi which is at a distance of 22km from our home. Also, we wanted to have breakfast. Since there was a lot of people trying to get out of Bengaluru all the popular restaurants were crowded. After skipping nearly 7-8 popular restaurants finally we stopped at Adyar Anandabhavan at Bidadi. It was 10.20AM by the time we reached there. We had to struggle for parking space there as well because of the crowd. Huh!!1finally got parking. But wait!!!!! It is not yet there. There was a huge queue for getting tokens for the food we order. The queue took around 30 minutes to process our request and after that around 15 minutes to get our order fulfilled ( with nack of stealing plates as soon as it is kept on the platform). Finally we finished our breakfast with half filled stomach and started to Kere thonnuru at 11.15AM. As expected, the traffic inflow kept increasing which made us to spend a lot of time in all the towns on the way - Ramanagara - Chennapattana - Mandya. The city traffic felt like adding salt on top of the wound. We were even worried that the temple might have got closed by the time we reached there. Because there was no clear information regarding the temple timings on the internet - This is when we should realize that internet is not everything. We should talk to the people in the society to get more information about their places. We crossed Mandya and took a deviation on the way to Sriranga pattana. This road led to Kere thonnuru. We reached the destination at 12.45PM. With the doubt in mind about temple timings, we got down in front of the temple and inquired about it. They gave good news that the Aachars are in the temple and it is open.
We first went to the majestic Nambi Narayana temple. This was the first Narayana murthi set by Sri Ramanujacharya. The other 4 narayana temples established by him are Melukote Cheluvanarayana, Gadags Veeranarayana, Talakadu KeertiNarayana and Beluru Sowmya Narayana. The temple is spread across a huge area. There is a big lawn in front of the temple and a garudagamba which is the proof of majesty of this temple. We first visited Aravinda Nayaki temple followed by visit to the Nambi Narayana temple. The temple has a long history. It is a protected monument under archaeological department. The murthi is so charming and one will get lost in bhakti seeing the almighty. The aachar told that there is prasadam distribution. We had a pradakshina at the temple prakara and went out to collect the prasadam. They served the tasty curd rice which was so tasty that we went again to have some more of it :) Since it was almost lunch time we got this prasadam as a gods gift to fill our hungry stomach. This is how the temple looked :)
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| Temple entrance |
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| Garudagamba |
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| Info by Archaeological dept |
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| Temple premise |
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| Prakara |
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| Another view of prakara |
After this we went on to visit the ancient Yoga Narasimhaswamy temple which is behind this temple on a hillock. There are few steps to reach this temple. It is believed that the murthi was installed during Prahlada's era of tretayuga. It is also believed that the desires of the people will be fulfilled if they have anything in mind on visiting this place. There is also a magic stick (mantra danda) of Sri Ramanujacharya which he used to destroy the Brahmarakshasas. We took the blessings at this pious place and proceeded to visit the Venugopalaswamy temple which is present opposite to the Nambi narayana temple. We finished the darshana of this charming lord and proceeded to visit the Kere - Thonnuru kere. This was build as part of Cauvery Neeravari nigama. This place is very calm and offers a breeze which is blissful. Totally we surrendered to the calm, peaceful and mesmerizing architectural beauty of the temples and the cheerful lake. Here are few more snaps from this place.
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| Venugopalaswamy temple |
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| Temple architecture sample |
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| View from Yoganarasimha swamy temple |
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| Another view from the temple |
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| Tonnuru kere |
It took around 2 hours to completely cover this place. After this we planned to visit the Lakshmi narayana temple at Hosaholalu. We reached this place which was around 30km at 4.30PM. The temple was closed at that time. We called the phone number mentioned in the temple premises and the aachar came and opened the temple. We finished executing our plan and returned via Kunigal to Bengaluru. On the way we had refreshments at the famous Swathi delicacy and reached Bengaluru by 8.30PM.
Important takeaway:
- One can visit Keretonnuru in three different routes. Shortest route is via Mandya. The fastest route could be via Kunigal. There is also one more route. Check in google for appropriate route. Approximate distance is around 135-150km from Bengaluru.
- If you take Mysuru road, there are plenty of eateries till Mandya. Also in Kunigal route there are plenty of options for food.
- The temple timings is from 9.30AM till 5.30PM However do not be surprised if you see the temple closed when you visited. You can always call the aachar who resides near by temple. They will come and open the temple for you. For this, you should talk to the localites :) Google/internet is not everything.
- One can have the full plan as mentioned in this blog
- It would be better to have private vehicle to cover these places. But buses are available form Mandya/ Pandavapura to this place. But less frequent.
We enjoyed this place thoroughly. Hope you all will like it and plan a visit to this place.
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