Somnathpur

This weekend, I had planned a trip to Somnathpur, which is some 35 kilometers from Mysore. Its a Hoysala architecture temple in a small village.

Hatched a stupid plan to travel by night train to Mysore and catch a bus from there to Somnathpur. Was in Bangalore Majestic bus stop from 10, waiting for the 2'o clock to Mysore. After noon went to the train ticket counter to book the tickets. Waited in Bangalore railway station until 2.

Bangalore Railway station @ noon

The general compartment shows how the poor India exists still. Living in Bangalore and spending time by watching movies and trying new restaurants every week, just keeps you away from reality. The real India still suffers in poverty. Watching people of very poor background around you. To be frank, I felt completely out of the crowd and was scared a bit. I tried to sleep a bit but couldn't get any sleep because of the weather. I hadn't taken any precautions for the weather. The night was so cold.

Was expecting the train to reach Mysore by  5 in the morning. But to our shock it reached Mysore by 4. Now we have to face the problem. I will have to kill time till might be till 7 before the buses starts functioning to the remote village. So started to take a walk around the palace. The town was just getting ready for the day.

Mysore Palace @ 5 in the morning

The roads around the palace

Finally the sun is up

We had to take two connecting buses before reaching Somnathpur. The first bus took us completely outside Mysore to a small town called Bannur. I had a chance to see a lot of metdaor vans after a long time. They had just vanished from my memory. I never knew they still existed. We were waiting there not completely aware if we are in the right direction towards Somnathpur. Just then we encountered a Chinese who was backpacking around South India for a month now. A sign of a foreigner in a remote part of India just means that you are in the right direction towards your destination. Now all we have to do is follow him.

We had reached the temple well before the gates were open. The gates open by 8.30 AM. We took a small walk around the village, and then was back to the temple complex.

The temple complex looked so small at first. Small compared to a lot of other temples, I have visited. But it was later when I found out that why this temple out of no where in some remote village attracted so many visitors. During the few hours I spent in the temple, I had seen a lot of foreigners than Indians.

The thing, I like about old monuments is that, I time travel to the time when this monument was in it's glorious days. The imagination I make in my head, that is so beautiful. That is why I visit these historical places and that is why I love reading fiction especially historical fiction.

Just overheard it from the tourist guide, that this temple stopped operating, I mean people stopped worshipping in this temple after Mallik Kafur raided this temple and destroyed the structure. And he also pointed at the main shrine and mentioned that it was a replica of the original shrine which is in London Museum.

The best thing about this temple was its minute details. The minute details in each carving was simply awesome.

After just going around the temple. I had just entered the temple. The inside of the temple is just awesome. It is un explainable. I just believe few things are better experienced in person than reading or seeing it a photograph. My camera's flash had stopped working. So I was not able to take any photos inside the temple. The ceilings were the highlight of the whole architecture. You should sure visit it and experience the awesomeness in person.

Then came back to Mysore well before lunch and had a quick look at the palace again and started to Bangalore. Roaming around the streets of Mysore brought back some nice memories of my time in Infosys.

Coorg

I had no special interest about Coorg. I had already visited it once in good old college days. Apparently most of the engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu would have come to Coorg in the excuse of industrial visit. Because our friend insisted on going to Coorg, we accepted. Made plans for the trip and decided on two things to do in Coorg, Trekking and River rafting.

As usual, we were late to start from Bangalore. We started by around 9 am. Had our breakfast in one of the Thatte idli shops on the way to Mysore. Wanted to try the authentic idlis. Thats what the shops claimed to sell. But not sure if that is true, because the idli's didn't seem to be so great. It was so depressing to see people waving their hands and whistling to attract customers to their shops. It was depressing because they literally fall in front of your vehicle to stop in their shop.

Thatte Idli

As we were already late and wanted to catch up, we were fast and wasted no time after that. We reached Madikeri around 3. Had lunch and enquired about river rafting. Unfortunately it was not the right season for rafting. There was very less water and we tried rafting. We would not call it rafting, might be I should call it sailing.

Jumped into the cavery and took bath in the river. The day was done. It already started getting dark. We need to get a room and have dinner. I was expecting a cheap place to stay like in Murudeshwar. We spent around 500 bucks there for a room. The room was comfortable enough for a days sleep. But in Madikeri, we were not able to find a decent place for a decent price. Might be it was because of the season. As the time was running out, we had to settle down for a hotel and went to sleep. The plan for the next day was to trek to Thadiyandamol. It's an 8kms trek to the second highest peak in Karnataka and the first highest in Coorg. We planned to start early so that we can leave Coorg as early as possible to catch a bus in Bangalore.

Again as usual, we were late getting up. The trip to the starting of the trek was one hell of a ride. The place was full of fog and looked so beautiful.

The view from the hotel room

The way to the base of the trek

The twilight effect

Reflection

The way were we drove the car was a dangerous one way. It's my first time driving in a mountain one way road. Whatever extra ordinary skills the driver had, the passengers were pissing in their pants. The whole 3-4 kms drive, everyone was quite. Later we learned that all the other vehicles were parked a long distance away. We didn't notice that and we had taken our vehicle to a point we can't go further. We parked our car in a slope, and used big stones to stop it from rolling.

Then we started walking. We carried only few bottles of water. When we started we saw people coming down. They were all prepared for the trek. They had camping bags and proper shoes. We neither had shoes nor food with us. We kept on walking. The trek was the awesome part of the trip.

The view from the top

On the way back we caught up with the golden temple and fled back to Bangalore.

Hogenakkal

We had planned for a short one day trip and was looking for options. Among all other places we choose Hogenakkal.

Started from Bangalore at around 12. Had lunch in a small hotel in Hosur. Ate heavily since it was a long time after which we are having food in a tamil shop.

The trip was not so fun till Hosur, since the day was hot and there was traffic. From there we took a state highway. The scenes around were good, and we started enjoying the ride. The air had turned cool and the road had less traffic and was peaceful.

 

The things which come to mind, when you hear about Hogenakkal are oil massage, fish and coracle ride. We reached Hogenakkal by around 4. People started leaving by then. We had parked our car, and people started approaching us asking if we needed an oil massage. There was a lady who was ready to cook for us, if we buy her fish. She said she will cook us food and fish by the time we come back from our bath.

We were in no mood to eat and, we rushed to the massage place. We had oil massage. I will literally say we payed them to beat us up. I knew this coming, but I thought it would be relaxing after the massage. But contrary to my thought, I had bruises in my stomach and the next I felt pain in my body. I seriously don't think all the people who offer you massage there are professionals. And there is no way you can find one. Everyone wears a uniform. I will never advice anyone to get a massage there.

We went to the falls to take bath. It was awesome. There was a lot of water in the falls. We were afraid about the availability of the water before staring to Hogenakkal. Tried asking google if there is enough water in Hogenakkal falls, but sadly google didn't have the answer for it. The water level didn't disappoint us.

The falls and man catching fish

We then started from there once it started getting dark. Sunset and sunrise are the most beautiful things wherever you are. We didn't have time to go in the coracle as there had shut it down already by the time we had reached there.