Wednesday, July 11, 2007
pevaji.. an unauthorised production
Scroll horizontally on this image
based on anuradha sengupta's blog on sivaji..
Enjoy the show.. Also the image above was created on toondoo.. sorry I just followed anuradha's steps in creating my own toon..
Go to www.toondoo.com and enjoy creating your own cartoons.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Somnathpur - Keshava temple - An World Heritage Site
Brief Details:
Place: Somnathpur
Known for: Chennakeshava temple built by Hoysalas, An UNESCO World Heritage site for Architecture, specifically for roof carvings, Lathe cut Rock Pillars.
Nearest Town: Srirangapatna
Nearest City: Mysore
Driving Directions: Take the Bangalore - Mysore Highway towards Mysore. 2 kms Before Srirangapatna, ask for directions for Somnathpur(sorry, almost forgot the intermediate villages)
Other nearby Tourist Attractions:
View All pics Here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nandakumar.s/Somnathpur
Camera Details:
Nokia 3230 Mobile phone with 1.3Mega pixel resolution camera
Travel Log:
This was my first trip on my very own car.. :) I am all blushing here though. I have been very much rusty in my driving skills and the plan to go to Somnathpur had formed in my mind only 2 days before.
As per my initial plans, me and my wife were to start pretty early in the morning to fight off the traffic blues, as the road to Mysore was still under construction and is prone to heavy traffic. Anyways I could get up only at 6.30am and by the time, we left our home, it was almost 7.30 am, so the first stop had to be at Shell petrol bunk, for filling up Petrol. After filling up petrol, we proceeded on our way, towards Maddur to have Maddur Vada at Maddur Tiffany's.
Maddur Tiffany is a must-stop for the famous Maddur Vada(available in Karnataka) and their claim is that they are the home of the Maddur Vada. I had to stop for a cup of tea, after the home-made pongal for Breakfast, I was feeling a bit drowsy and chose Maddur tiffany as my stop.
Driving on the Bangalore - Mysore is a different ball-game after driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic in Bangalore. This road, sets you free after Bidadi, almost after Kengeri, the traffic is less, but after Bidadi, the traffic is greatly reduced, even though you can still come across Trucks, Buses and cars passing you at break-neck speed. As usual, I was a bit cautious as I am new to Highway driving and had preferred to let others go and refrained myself from competing with others on speed, except on a couple of occasions, mostly I had restrained myself in speed.
Also due to a continuous line of villages and town, you can also come across small trucks, tractors, two-wheelers coming on the opposite side of a four-lane highway :( , due to which I reminded myself of my novice-ness in driving and kept myself under limit.
After Maddur, the next stop was upon Nearing Srirangapatna, as I was not sure about the route to take and there were no signboards for pointting to Somnathpur. After checking up with a couple of people, I hit upon a signboard to a Venkatesa perumal temple before a bridge and took the turn. From this turning, somnathpur is almost 25 kms through district roads & village roads.
This road is very scenic and you will be driving next to the cauvery/Bheemeshwari and lush fields on both the sides. Luckily the river was broad and overflowing in the month of August and we had lovely cool climate to make the drive pleasant.
Somnathpur has only one temple and it was built by one of the Hoysala's dandanayaka named "Soma"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnathpur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoysala
This is my first visit to a Hoysala temple and one of most awe-inspiring aspect is the intricate details of cravings in stone done on the roof, panels, lathe turned Stone Pillars(cylindrical and with a smooth surface)(made me to wonder how could they have done such things at 1000Ad?)
Guides are available on the temple site and the Archaeology department maintains the temple cleanly so as to retain the tag of "World Heritage" site. Please note that there are no poojas done in the temple and the moola-vikragas are only replicas of the originals. The originals were either taken away by raiders or were destroyed in the subsequent invasions and wars.
Intricate carvings on the outer walls depicts lots of stories from Ramayana and Mahabharatha and my faithful Nokia camera phone has captured them in details. The wall panels are of less than a 3/4th of a feet tall, but have so many intricate stories, that me and wife spent almost 2 hours trying to identify the story and to refresh our mythological knowledges.
Interesting of these carvings is the Kamasutra cravings present only in the right wall on the outside of the entrance(while entering the temple). We found quite a no. of people gaping at these cravings in exotic postures. I had captured them in my other camera, but dont have an image to post here.
Ramayana & Mahabharatha carvings:
Look at the Krishna stealing butter image, You can actually see one of the gopika's showing a surprised look and an older one with an angry look. This is truely great in terms of the actual size of the panel, that you are still able to see so much emotion in the sculptures.
This pic looks like the Pandavas and the Kauravas having a friendly wrestling match, Comments are welcome for changing my identification.
A Shaken picture of Ravana, in all splendour, even though 10heads would probably be an euphemisim for 10 capitals or 10 ministers or 10 heads of army.
>
Baby krishna, sitting on an Araki's thigh, before killing her.
Sita's swayamvara panel, notice the Rama going after the bow.
Killing of Vaali. Note here that Vaali is twice the size of Sugreeya, probably trying to portray that Vaali takes half of the strength of the opponent, but since Rama cannot be depicted properly standing behind a tree, we can see him on the side.
We just could not move away such a wonderful place with so minute depictions of so many stories, somehow on the way back, I realised that I should kept a guide and extracted all the information from him, by pestering on the wall reliefs.
The return trip had us finding our way to Ramapremya swami temple in Chennapatna, and we returned home in the evening by around 7pm.
Place: Somnathpur
Known for: Chennakeshava temple built by Hoysalas, An UNESCO World Heritage site for Architecture, specifically for roof carvings, Lathe cut Rock Pillars.
Nearest Town: Srirangapatna
Nearest City: Mysore
Driving Directions: Take the Bangalore - Mysore Highway towards Mysore. 2 kms Before Srirangapatna, ask for directions for Somnathpur(sorry, almost forgot the intermediate villages)
Other nearby Tourist Attractions:
- Shivannasamudra falls,
- Mysore city,
- Brindavan Gardens & Dam,
- Talakadu - pilgrimage,
- GRS Fantasy Park - Theme park.
- Ranganthittu - Bird sanctuary & Boating
View All pics Here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nandakumar.s/Somnathpur
Camera Details:
Nokia 3230 Mobile phone with 1.3Mega pixel resolution camera
Travel Log:
This was my first trip on my very own car.. :) I am all blushing here though. I have been very much rusty in my driving skills and the plan to go to Somnathpur had formed in my mind only 2 days before.
As per my initial plans, me and my wife were to start pretty early in the morning to fight off the traffic blues, as the road to Mysore was still under construction and is prone to heavy traffic. Anyways I could get up only at 6.30am and by the time, we left our home, it was almost 7.30 am, so the first stop had to be at Shell petrol bunk, for filling up Petrol. After filling up petrol, we proceeded on our way, towards Maddur to have Maddur Vada at Maddur Tiffany's.
Maddur Tiffany is a must-stop for the famous Maddur Vada(available in Karnataka) and their claim is that they are the home of the Maddur Vada. I had to stop for a cup of tea, after the home-made pongal for Breakfast, I was feeling a bit drowsy and chose Maddur tiffany as my stop.
Driving on the Bangalore - Mysore is a different ball-game after driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic in Bangalore. This road, sets you free after Bidadi, almost after Kengeri, the traffic is less, but after Bidadi, the traffic is greatly reduced, even though you can still come across Trucks, Buses and cars passing you at break-neck speed. As usual, I was a bit cautious as I am new to Highway driving and had preferred to let others go and refrained myself from competing with others on speed, except on a couple of occasions, mostly I had restrained myself in speed.
Also due to a continuous line of villages and town, you can also come across small trucks, tractors, two-wheelers coming on the opposite side of a four-lane highway :( , due to which I reminded myself of my novice-ness in driving and kept myself under limit.
After Maddur, the next stop was upon Nearing Srirangapatna, as I was not sure about the route to take and there were no signboards for pointting to Somnathpur. After checking up with a couple of people, I hit upon a signboard to a Venkatesa perumal temple before a bridge and took the turn. From this turning, somnathpur is almost 25 kms through district roads & village roads.
This road is very scenic and you will be driving next to the cauvery/Bheemeshwari and lush fields on both the sides. Luckily the river was broad and overflowing in the month of August and we had lovely cool climate to make the drive pleasant.
Somnathpur has only one temple and it was built by one of the Hoysala's dandanayaka named "Soma"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnathpur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoysala
This is my first visit to a Hoysala temple and one of most awe-inspiring aspect is the intricate details of cravings in stone done on the roof, panels, lathe turned Stone Pillars(cylindrical and with a smooth surface)(made me to wonder how could they have done such things at 1000Ad?)
Guides are available on the temple site and the Archaeology department maintains the temple cleanly so as to retain the tag of "World Heritage" site. Please note that there are no poojas done in the temple and the moola-vikragas are only replicas of the originals. The originals were either taken away by raiders or were destroyed in the subsequent invasions and wars.
Intricate carvings on the outer walls depicts lots of stories from Ramayana and Mahabharatha and my faithful Nokia camera phone has captured them in details. The wall panels are of less than a 3/4th of a feet tall, but have so many intricate stories, that me and wife spent almost 2 hours trying to identify the story and to refresh our mythological knowledges.
Interesting of these carvings is the Kamasutra cravings present only in the right wall on the outside of the entrance(while entering the temple). We found quite a no. of people gaping at these cravings in exotic postures. I had captured them in my other camera, but dont have an image to post here.
Ramayana & Mahabharatha carvings:
.jpg){kind=link}
Look at the Krishna stealing butter image, You can actually see one of the gopika's showing a surprised look and an older one with an angry look. This is truely great in terms of the actual size of the panel, that you are still able to see so much emotion in the sculptures.
This pic looks like the Pandavas and the Kauravas having a friendly wrestling match, Comments are welcome for changing my identification.
A Shaken picture of Ravana, in all splendour, even though 10heads would probably be an euphemisim for 10 capitals or 10 ministers or 10 heads of army.
>
Baby krishna, sitting on an Araki's thigh, before killing her.
Sita's swayamvara panel, notice the Rama going after the bow.
Killing of Vaali. Note here that Vaali is twice the size of Sugreeya, probably trying to portray that Vaali takes half of the strength of the opponent, but since Rama cannot be depicted properly standing behind a tree, we can see him on the side.
We just could not move away such a wonderful place with so minute depictions of so many stories, somehow on the way back, I realised that I should kept a guide and extracted all the information from him, by pestering on the wall reliefs.
The return trip had us finding our way to Ramapremya swami temple in Chennapatna, and we returned home in the evening by around 7pm.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Kotilingeshwara - The way not to take
Kotilingeshwara, is a small village hamlet, situated between Kolar Gold fields & Bangarapet. The shortcut to fame for Kotilingeshwara is a temple complex dedicated towards housing a Koti (10 Million or 1 Crore) Lingams.
My parents had been wanting to visit this place, after they came across an article in one of the Religious Magazines. So we decided to go to this place on a Sunday morning (Sep 17, 2006). We had plans to leave early in the morning and head to this place, but unfortunately we got delayed start and had to head towards the Shell petrol bunk on Hosur road. So we had to take a first deviation from our path to fill up petrol.
We then took the Ring road, to go towards Old Madras Road, upon reaching the intersection, we had to take a left to join the Highway, but instead by wrong instinct, we took the right turn and found ourself in front of ITPL, whitefield. So the second deviation it was from the regular route.
Further down, I realised we had come the wrong way, instead of hitting the Old Madras Road and then after asking a couple of people for directions, we found ourselves at the white field railway station Gate, waiting for a very long time for one engine to be moved. Again, after further directions, we crossed the Sai baba ashram in Whitefield, through pot-hole filled roads and found the road toward NH.
Through our detours we had considerably lost half-of the morning. Finally we took the NH and proceeded towards Kolar. 15kms before Kolar, we began to ask directions for Kotilingeshwara and promptly realised that we might have to go beyond Kolar(20 - 25kms) to reach this place. As fate would have it, we all badly wanted to have a cup of Tea at a decent place and I ended up suggesting to have a cup of tea at Woodys in Kolar, since we will have to cross Kolar.
Soon we reached Kolar, and we proceeded to go into the town, to go to Woodys. This action turned out again to be a bad choice, as Woodys was outside Kolar and we would have been better off, take the bypass towards Chennai, instead of getting into Kolar and hence we lost another 30mins by going through slow moving traffic and asking directions.
By around 12pm we reached Woodys and felt that we would be better off taking our lunch as our supposed guides had told us that there was not a good place to have decent lunch at Kotilingeshwara. Again, we started to ask the Woody's people for directions, who directed us to take a left turn on the Bypass towards Bangalore and to ask for directions after 10kms. This turned out to be a splendid mistake, as the route began to turn into a village road, going further down, we realised that we were the only car on the entire road and there was no other transportation.
A couple of villagers were found here and there looking at us with amazement as to why would a car be found on this stretch. Luckily we found another board, which pointed us towards KGF, but the road was something left over of a road. Soon, there was a person on a moped driving behind us, that gave us a little bit of hope, that we were not lost in a forest and there is some civilization around us.
On this route, we found lots of vegetable and tomato farms, but we could not find people in the farms and there were couple of kgs of tomatoes on the road, crushed and rotten, most probably due to the fact that tomato prices had fallen very low, that cost of transporting them to the market was higher than the price realisation for the farmers.
Somehow, we got hold of this guy on the moped coming behind us, and he in turn agreed to show us the direction to Kotilingeshwara. With him in the front and us following him behind in our car, it was a funny sight, when our guide went off-road and took us through the walking paths and into nearby village, with a couple of turns here and there and through incomplete culverts, we finally reach Kotilingeshwara at around 2pm.
Unlike other places, in Kotilingeshwara you have to pay an entrance fees of 10Rs per person.
Kotilingeshwara currently houses some 60 lakhs(6 million) of lingams and is yet to reach the 10 Million figure, this place has been in existence for more than 10 years and also one of the biggest Lingam & Nandi, the only let down is both of these are made from concrete and iron,
All the lingams that have been contributed here have been made out cement and are mass-produced and hence follows little guidelines laid out for the structural integrity for a lingam. This place has an amazing number of lingams contributed by all the famous and infamous people by contributing a few thousands of rupees.
Temple and the surroundings are well-controlled by the swamiji(dont know his name) & his family and you can find lingams all around walls, floors, door steps in all sizes, ranging from the smallest to quite large ones ofcourse all in cement. If you would like to contribute a lingam, all it takes is a couple of thousands of rupees and a few minutes of time for the lingam to be pasted to the base(avudaiyar) and to have a pooja performed.
Our return journey was without wrong turns, we reached Bangalore back in time to pick up my wife from the airport along with a coffee break in Kamat's before Kolar, drenched in the rain.
Claim to Fame: You can find this place in some of the Telugu movie Song & Dance sequences, particularly the ones with a religious theme.
Total No. of Lingams: 60 Lakhs (6 million) as on the date of journey.
Closest City: Bangalore
Driving Directions:
1. Take Old Madras Route from Bangalore to Kolar
2. Take the Kolar By-pass and proceed to Bangarapet
3. 15kms from Bangarapet station towards KGF.
My parents had been wanting to visit this place, after they came across an article in one of the Religious Magazines. So we decided to go to this place on a Sunday morning (Sep 17, 2006). We had plans to leave early in the morning and head to this place, but unfortunately we got delayed start and had to head towards the Shell petrol bunk on Hosur road. So we had to take a first deviation from our path to fill up petrol.
We then took the Ring road, to go towards Old Madras Road, upon reaching the intersection, we had to take a left to join the Highway, but instead by wrong instinct, we took the right turn and found ourself in front of ITPL, whitefield. So the second deviation it was from the regular route.
Further down, I realised we had come the wrong way, instead of hitting the Old Madras Road and then after asking a couple of people for directions, we found ourselves at the white field railway station Gate, waiting for a very long time for one engine to be moved. Again, after further directions, we crossed the Sai baba ashram in Whitefield, through pot-hole filled roads and found the road toward NH.
Through our detours we had considerably lost half-of the morning. Finally we took the NH and proceeded towards Kolar. 15kms before Kolar, we began to ask directions for Kotilingeshwara and promptly realised that we might have to go beyond Kolar(20 - 25kms) to reach this place. As fate would have it, we all badly wanted to have a cup of Tea at a decent place and I ended up suggesting to have a cup of tea at Woodys in Kolar, since we will have to cross Kolar.
Soon we reached Kolar, and we proceeded to go into the town, to go to Woodys. This action turned out again to be a bad choice, as Woodys was outside Kolar and we would have been better off, take the bypass towards Chennai, instead of getting into Kolar and hence we lost another 30mins by going through slow moving traffic and asking directions.
By around 12pm we reached Woodys and felt that we would be better off taking our lunch as our supposed guides had told us that there was not a good place to have decent lunch at Kotilingeshwara. Again, we started to ask the Woody's people for directions, who directed us to take a left turn on the Bypass towards Bangalore and to ask for directions after 10kms. This turned out to be a splendid mistake, as the route began to turn into a village road, going further down, we realised that we were the only car on the entire road and there was no other transportation.
A couple of villagers were found here and there looking at us with amazement as to why would a car be found on this stretch. Luckily we found another board, which pointed us towards KGF, but the road was something left over of a road. Soon, there was a person on a moped driving behind us, that gave us a little bit of hope, that we were not lost in a forest and there is some civilization around us.
On this route, we found lots of vegetable and tomato farms, but we could not find people in the farms and there were couple of kgs of tomatoes on the road, crushed and rotten, most probably due to the fact that tomato prices had fallen very low, that cost of transporting them to the market was higher than the price realisation for the farmers.
Somehow, we got hold of this guy on the moped coming behind us, and he in turn agreed to show us the direction to Kotilingeshwara. With him in the front and us following him behind in our car, it was a funny sight, when our guide went off-road and took us through the walking paths and into nearby village, with a couple of turns here and there and through incomplete culverts, we finally reach Kotilingeshwara at around 2pm.
Unlike other places, in Kotilingeshwara you have to pay an entrance fees of 10Rs per person.
Kotilingeshwara currently houses some 60 lakhs(6 million) of lingams and is yet to reach the 10 Million figure, this place has been in existence for more than 10 years and also one of the biggest Lingam & Nandi, the only let down is both of these are made from concrete and iron,
All the lingams that have been contributed here have been made out cement and are mass-produced and hence follows little guidelines laid out for the structural integrity for a lingam. This place has an amazing number of lingams contributed by all the famous and infamous people by contributing a few thousands of rupees.
Temple and the surroundings are well-controlled by the swamiji(dont know his name) & his family and you can find lingams all around walls, floors, door steps in all sizes, ranging from the smallest to quite large ones ofcourse all in cement. If you would like to contribute a lingam, all it takes is a couple of thousands of rupees and a few minutes of time for the lingam to be pasted to the base(avudaiyar) and to have a pooja performed.
Our return journey was without wrong turns, we reached Bangalore back in time to pick up my wife from the airport along with a coffee break in Kamat's before Kolar, drenched in the rain.
Claim to Fame: You can find this place in some of the Telugu movie Song & Dance sequences, particularly the ones with a religious theme.
Total No. of Lingams: 60 Lakhs (6 million) as on the date of journey.
Closest City: Bangalore
Driving Directions:
1. Take Old Madras Route from Bangalore to Kolar
2. Take the Kolar By-pass and proceed to Bangarapet
3. 15kms from Bangarapet station towards KGF.
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