Trip to Belur - Halebidu - Srungeri - Sirimane Falls - Horanadu - Dharmasthala - Kukke

Hi All... before going details, below are quick info...

Places Covered : Belur - Halebidu - Srungeri - Sirimane Falls - Horanadu - Dharmasthala - Kukke

Traveling route: From Bangalore take a diversion towards Hassan at Nelamanagala Junction. You can even reach Belur by continuing in NH4 at Nelamangala to reach Kadur, Chikkamagalur and Belur but this is bit long journey but road is bit better (make a note of word bit). From Belur just follow the places in the list I wrote above. Finlay after visiting Kukke you can come back to Bangalore from Hassan road.

Purpose Of visit: Main purpose is my Son's Aksharabyasa at Srungeri Sharadhamba temple. Rest all places are just covered as they are near by.

Number of Days: 2 nights and 3 days

Total Traveled KM : 1020 KM

Transport: Mahindra Logan rented at 7.5Rs per KM

Trip Story:

Now let us start the journey. As I said the main purpose of the trip was my son's Aksharabyasa which is ceremony to start first writing in front of Sharadhamba Goddess. We need to plan a lot this time as we have 2.5 years old son. We never did a night journey in the whole trip and took good rest at each place to make entire trip go smooth. After all planning we started our journey on Friday morning 6pm.

Belur:

Took lot of breaks in between and reached our first destination Belur at 1pm. Belur and Halebidu is a must watch once in a life time to admire the beauty for Hoysala Kingdom architecture. This place was the capital of Hoysala Kingdom. The place to see here is Chennakesava temple .The sculptures were so beautiful and shows the greatness of master mind Jakanachari who created these master pieces... We cannot imagine even in those days (12th century) they created such a great art. Even hundred photos are not enough to show the value of this place... Few are below my favorites...

Halebidu:

- Left Belur on 1pm and had lunch on the way and reached Halebidu our next destination at ~2pm.
- Main attractions are Hoysaleswara and Kedareswara temples again famous for sculptures...

Halebidu means ruined city. This name is given as this city was ruined two times by Bahamani Sultante. They destroyed entire temple by breaking lot of sculptures. It looks so bad that such a beautiful place has been destroyed on the name of cultures. Anyway again its a must watch place. We almost spent 2 hours in this place and then started our journey to next stop.
few pics of Halebidu...

Srungeri:

- Left ~3pm from Halebidu and reached Sringeri at 8pm.
- Main places to see are Sharadhamba temple and Vidya Shankar temple
- Hotels: You will get lot of hotel to stay including the one the temple offers. Outside it is ~400Rs to 500Rs for double bedded room. Again rates changes depending on demand. Food is very bad and not at all clean in all hotels. So you need to bare this.

Sharadhamba temple is very famous for this Aksharabyasa ceromony. Just make a note that you mention the kids age is 3 or 6 for this pooja. They may decline for small kids. As we reached late in night, we took the hotel in front of temple to rest for the night.

Morning at sharp 7am the pooja starts and will be there till 1pm. We were the first one to be there and got our pooja done faster (priest completed the pooja in just 10 mins :( ). Then we offered slates, books, pens, pencils to few kids there.

After this ceremony we went to the river just back side of temple. There were hundreds of fishes readily waiting for food from us. Fishes were enjoying the food that all devotes gave. My kid enjoyed a lot for an hour playing with them.

So by 10am we were done with all side seeings and started the journey to Sirimane falls which is just 12 km from this place. You have to come back to Srungeri from Sirimane falls in return journey. So plan accordingly.

Pics from Srungeri...

Sirimane falls:

This was really great falls and just 20 mins drive from Srungeri. We reached here around 11am. There were only very few of them at the falls, hence enjoyed the falls alone. Water was soo chilling that no body dare to enter the water. After few mins I dared to get wet in falls and enjoyed for 1 hour . At 2pm we started our journey to next place....

Pics:

Horanadu:

- Around 6pm reached Horanadu.
- Main place to visit is Annapoorneswari temple

As we reached at 6pm, we choose to stay there for the night stay. The hotel given by temple was decent enough to stay. As it was bit cold there was no need of AC room anyway.
Eat night dinner in temple only. Food was ok but much much better than hotels outside. So you have no choice.

Next day (Sunday) early in the morning we got ready and started our journey at sharp 6am. You will get hot water for bath only from 5:30am to 6am, so you have to wake up early if not be ready to get bath in chilling water which comes all time.

Dharmasthala

- Reached in just 3 hours of journey from Horanadu. distance is just ~80KM but the entire road is forest area with full of turns (be ready to vomit all the way :( )
- Manjunatha Swamy temple is the only place to see.

Manjunatha Swamy temple is most sacred place which is visited by most kannadigas like Tirupathi in AP. Be ready for long queue. We were lucky enough to get dharshan in 30 mins itself. This is why I prefer traveling on non-peak days.

Food is very pathetic again here outside. So prefer food from temple only but you need to wait in a long queue.

Kukke Subramanya:

- Again 2 hours journey from Dharmasthala. Kukke is famous for Subramanaya temple. We had dharshan and done with our last stop.

End of the trip:

So by 3pm we started return journey to Bangalore. Reached Bangalore around 10pm. Completely tired and took again another one complete day to get back to daily boring routine.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

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