Saturday morning dawned brilliantly. I left home around 7:30, reached Josh's place around 8 and we hit the road on two bikes, my Thunderbird and his Karizma at 8:10. The first stop was at the Kamath on Mysore Road sharing its name with a Srilankan leg spinner, Lokaruchi. This is situated between Ramanagara and Channapatna. A very popular place as proved by the huge queue waiting to get seated. Thankfully we were able to get a place to sit in 10-15 minutes, just in time to have two Akki rotis. My second Akki roti was the hotel's last one for the morning. Idly vada for me and puri and masala dosa for Josh also happened.
So far, due to the traffic and some initial inertia, we had travelled at an actual rate of around 47 kms per hour. My refuelling helped in giving some thrust to this, and the next 40 odd kms to Maddur were covered at a much faster pace, almost never going below 80kmph on the speedometer. So far the road, the SH17 from Bangalore to Mysore, was also superb.
Then we had to take a diversion towards Malavalli. And the road deteriorated, quite badly. Josh, who was driving without his helmet on, had to put on his helmet to get protection from the dust being thrown up. Malavalli on all its sides, from Maddur, Kanakapura, Sivanasamudram and Mysore has the some of the worst approach roads one can encounter.
The entrance to Malavalli was very picturesque though, with a huge lotus pond on one side of the road and verdant fields on the other. Should have taken a pic.
Somnathpur is 30 kms from Malavalli, 7 kms from Bannur on the road to Mysore. The road till Bannur is much much better than the stretch from Bannur to Somnathpur. That pathway is of the nature of removing all the enthu one would have in long distance bike rides. We were at Somnathpur a little after noon.
It is an eponymous Kesava temple there, built in the Hoysala style. Actually there are three garbha-grihas there, the idol directly facing the entrance being Kesava's. On an axis perpendicular to the entrance-main idol one are two other deities facing each other, Venugopala on the right side of Kesava and Janardhana on the left. The entire arrangement is like the star-connection in electrical circuits, with two of the angles (Kesava-Venugopala and Kesava-Janardhana) being 90 degrees and the third 180. There is a reason why this alignment reminded me of something that I learnt 7 years back. Each of the garbhagrihas is on a star shaped platform. A top view of the entire complex should make for an interesting view.
This temple has built a century after the more famous Belur and Halebid ones. While the general feel ( on a platform, soap stone, too much sculpting, essentially giving a feel of giving a free rein to the sculptors and then asking them to maximise the number of figures in a given area, probably the sculptors were paid in a figures/area rate) is the same, there are a few differences here. The most obvious one is the plainness of the lathed pillars, in stark contrast to the richness of Belur. Somnathpur is also a pure Vaishnava temple, in the sense that I did not see any Shiva/Ganesha images, there was one sculpture of Brahma though. Unlike Belur where the Victory pillar stands without any adhesive, here the pillar has been cemented to the base to prevent it from falling.
The temple is maintained really well by the ASI. Well manicured lawns, lots of trees around and surprisingly well maintained toilets, this could also be the result of not many people coming there. On Saturday, this was not the case, there were a couple of school picnics and one college tour to the place.
After having taken lots of pics (that will be uploaded soon), we decided to not take the same route back, but a route that would take us to the Bangalore-Mysore SH17 in the shortest distance.
So far, due to the traffic and some initial inertia, we had travelled at an actual rate of around 47 kms per hour. My refuelling helped in giving some thrust to this, and the next 40 odd kms to Maddur were covered at a much faster pace, almost never going below 80kmph on the speedometer. So far the road, the SH17 from Bangalore to Mysore, was also superb.
Then we had to take a diversion towards Malavalli. And the road deteriorated, quite badly. Josh, who was driving without his helmet on, had to put on his helmet to get protection from the dust being thrown up. Malavalli on all its sides, from Maddur, Kanakapura, Sivanasamudram and Mysore has the some of the worst approach roads one can encounter.
The entrance to Malavalli was very picturesque though, with a huge lotus pond on one side of the road and verdant fields on the other. Should have taken a pic.
Somnathpur is 30 kms from Malavalli, 7 kms from Bannur on the road to Mysore. The road till Bannur is much much better than the stretch from Bannur to Somnathpur. That pathway is of the nature of removing all the enthu one would have in long distance bike rides. We were at Somnathpur a little after noon.
It is an eponymous Kesava temple there, built in the Hoysala style. Actually there are three garbha-grihas there, the idol directly facing the entrance being Kesava's. On an axis perpendicular to the entrance-main idol one are two other deities facing each other, Venugopala on the right side of Kesava and Janardhana on the left. The entire arrangement is like the star-connection in electrical circuits, with two of the angles (Kesava-Venugopala and Kesava-Janardhana) being 90 degrees and the third 180. There is a reason why this alignment reminded me of something that I learnt 7 years back. Each of the garbhagrihas is on a star shaped platform. A top view of the entire complex should make for an interesting view.
This temple has built a century after the more famous Belur and Halebid ones. While the general feel ( on a platform, soap stone, too much sculpting, essentially giving a feel of giving a free rein to the sculptors and then asking them to maximise the number of figures in a given area, probably the sculptors were paid in a figures/area rate) is the same, there are a few differences here. The most obvious one is the plainness of the lathed pillars, in stark contrast to the richness of Belur. Somnathpur is also a pure Vaishnava temple, in the sense that I did not see any Shiva/Ganesha images, there was one sculpture of Brahma though. Unlike Belur where the Victory pillar stands without any adhesive, here the pillar has been cemented to the base to prevent it from falling.
The temple is maintained really well by the ASI. Well manicured lawns, lots of trees around and surprisingly well maintained toilets, this could also be the result of not many people coming there. On Saturday, this was not the case, there were a couple of school picnics and one college tour to the place.
After having taken lots of pics (that will be uploaded soon), we decided to not take the same route back, but a route that would take us to the Bangalore-Mysore SH17 in the shortest distance.
(To be continued)
Some background to why Somnathpur this specific weekend:
Vamshi and I had originally planned to do one 4-5 days aimless bike trip this weekend. But he dropped out due to some familial constraints. I could have gone home, but did not want to do so because of the violin classes.
Skimpy and I had originally planned to go to Somnathpur last weekend by his car. But the combination of an undecided Aadisht, a visiting IITM classmate and the following jobless weekend resulted in procrastination and shifting the plan to this weekend. At the same time, Josh had confirmed his participation in this excursion.
This weekend was also not too straightforward. We were to go on Friday. As on cue, prompt rains on Wednesday and Thursday meant that we shifted the plan to Saturday. Then Skimpy put NED, but I still decided to go on bike. Thankfully, Josh was also pretty enthu about the bike ride.
5 comments:
thala.. long time no updates in ur blogs.. was checking ur stuff often. :)
by the way, somnathpur is one in 108 divya desams!
maga! that is actually a delta connection! [:D]
and u are supposed to upload ur 'pose'. dont forget tht.
Thala is back with a bang. :D
@Prasanna
Somnathpur is not a Divya Desam. Surprisingly there are no Divya Desams in Karnataka.
@Josh
All pics uploaded maga.
@Gads
:-)
Very good blog... had a nice time reading it.
There is another hoysala temple along the back waters of KRS ,the temple was actually submerged but has been shifted to the embankment stone by stone..very beautiful place.
Abt the divya desam...
Its true... even Narayanar kovil in Melukote is not a divya desam.
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