26 Jan 09

Some 20 years ago, during one of my annual summer holidays, I remember visiting Somnathpur with my grandmother and a van load of relatives. We had driven down from Bangalore, stopped at Bandipur National Park for a few hours to watch wild elephants, took a peek at KRS Dam and somewhere along the journey stopped briefly at Somnathpur. I had not seen anything like this before and the impression is greater when you are a boy who has travelled very little outside the usual haunts of house and school.

We spent perhaps only fifteen minutes at this temple. I was just beginning to admire the sculptures when it was time to leave, too soon. I had this vague idea that someday I would return to this temple at Somnathpur. It has taken me 20 long years.

In those days, you could drive close to the temple walls and enter into the inner courtyard via a small doorway. Suddenly, before you have a chance to expect anything, while you are still thinking of road and journey, you are surprised. In the center you would find the profusely carved temple standing on an elevated platform of a stellate shape. Three vimanas top the stone structure. The inner courtyard is lined with a continuous stone-pillared corridor with numerous shrines.
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There was a 3 days off as 26^th Jan 2009 was on Monday and I thought of utilizing this time to going out to Chikmagalur, kuuke subramanyam however due to unavailability of reservations in resorts and last minutes commitments I along with my friend and his family, have opted for one day trip to Hogenakkal Falls on Sunday the 25^th so that we can relax on 26^th.

my son playing with river water

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25 Jan 2009

When I arrived at Mandya after a rather comfortable and short journey, I hardly knew what to see. The guidebooks I had at home didn’t mention anything of this town. I had not heard from anyone anything worth a visit at Mandya. However, this is a convenient place to stop for my visit tomorrow to Somnathpur.

I enquired with a few people if there was anything interesting in town. “There’s nothing here”, was the universal response. No one could point me to an interesting building, a local event or even a temple. Museums, art galleries and operas were out of the question. So here I was at Mandya with a few hours to kill and nothing to amuse myself. So I decided to walk through the streets and look at ordinary lives of ordinary people which they term as nothing.
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I was bored of regular day life and thought of drive out on weekend which will not be very far as my kid is small only 1 year old so do not want to take risk of arranging food for him and all locations. I already been to Nandi hills, pearl valley, Bannergatta national park and other surroundings places in Bangalore so looking for some place which is not commercial and should be one to 2 hour drive from Bangalore.

One of my friend told me to visit Chikkatirupathy – (Small Tirupathy) temple as there is a belief that people visit this temple if they are not able to visit Tirupathy temple.

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