Ranganathittu

There was little besides the temple at Somnathpur. As a result we still had a lot of time to kill for the day. We decided to go to one of the many other tourist places near Mysore. But first, our aim was to reach a good road as soon as possible. From Bannur, we could have taken the route that we had come by (some 50 kms to the Mysore Road) or take the road to Mysore 25kms away. It was a no brainer. We took the rod to Mysore.

Immediately after Bannur, the road improved immensely. (my theory to explain this is that Mandya district, where we had been travelling so far, has bad roads, while Mysore district is much better) Almost no potholes, just rumble strips from time to time and almost no traffic too. 80+ again. This time we also had two guys on a Splendour trying to keep up with us. They were pretty successful, but the Splendour engine was groaning under the stress by the time we parted ways a little before Mysore.

On hitting the Bangalore-Mysore highway, we turned towards Ranganathittu. One has to take a diversion a little before Srirangapatna while coming from Mysore. Enough boards to indicate the road to be travelled.

We had not had lunch, so were hungry. But the canteen at Ranganathittu, the only one there called Sumathi, was highly undermanned and also had a very uncooperative owner. One guy was handling some 10 tables and was prone to forget details. We decided to safely stick with Idli-vada (like the Akki roti in the previous post, these were the last ones at the place). The idli-vada wasn't good either. But there was no other choice, thanks to the monopoly.

The best (actually the only decent) part about Ranganathittu is the boat ride in the lake. Not many birds (both avian and human) were around at the time, the avian ones expected to land in huge numbers in January. But there were crocodiles basking in the sun on small rock islands. And one crocodile even made a few cool moves while we neared its rock. The 25 rupees for the boat ride was entirely worth it.

On the way back, we stopped at Kamath Lokaruchi on the way back for complete refuelling and then drove non-stop till home. The distance from Ranganathittu to Kamath was covered really fast, 80 kms or so in less than an hour and 15 minutes. And from Kamath to Outer Ring Road, I was able to keep Josh within my sights. Immense traffic at the Mysore Road-Outer Ring Road junction happened and only then I lost him. I took the Outer Ring Road and was at home around 8:30. Some curd rice made it a very satisfying end to a satistying day.

Pics.

Somnathpur

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.

(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.