the light baggage

Hedathale: Interesting story of an ancient temple Overview: Hedathale is a small village near the temple town of Nanjangud has an ancient Hoysala temple of Sri Lakshmikanthaswamy which is of great architectural importance. The 12th century Lakshmikanthaswamy(Vishnu) temple is unique in its own way. Inside the main temple, we have Narasimhaswamy and Venugopalaswamy idols and the main idol of Sri Lakshmikantha Swamy. Apart from this we come across a beautiful idol of Andal. The speciality of this idol is that in normal light it looks like an ordinary idol, but on performing puja and archana, the lights are switched off and once the aarti is placed near the forehead, the eyes of Andal look real and seems like looking straight into our eyes. This kind of beauty is rare to find in any other place.          The story gets better as we move inside a hall which is called a 'Chavadi' which is very interesting. The Chavadi was built by the Pallegara Dhanda Nayaka who had 16 daughters

Panchapalli & Bettamugilalam: Hidden Getaways from Bangalore Overview: Panchapalli Reservoir: I read about this place in Bangalore Mirror in its weekly feature on offbeat destinations around Bangalore. We decided to go biking to Panchapalli. It is around 85 kms from Bangalore and is a nice and silent place to spend a weekend. As it was a Sunday, there was not much traffic on Hosur road. We took the Anekal-Attibele road to reach Denkanikottai road. This road is really deserted but well maintained. Criss-Crossing the countryside and crossing the Karnataka-TN border we reached Denkanikottai. Its a bustling town and we enquired about Panchapalli lake from the locals and finally reached the road which leads to the lake. The roads were smooth and cool breeze blowing was great. We finally reached Panchapalli and it was very silent with not a single soul in sight. We sat by the lake for sometime and then thought of venturing into the wild following the water which was flowing steadily. W

Kodaikanal: Getting lost in the mist Overview: Day 0: The summer of 2009 was getting on our heads and we were searching for an escapade into the hills. I decided to visit Kodaikanal in April 2009 with my collegemates. We booked our hotels in advance and going by the reviews it was a pretty decent one. But for travel we had to book a special bus at 10:13 as the regular buses were full because of the long weekend and the sweltering heat. So our bus started from Shanthinagar bus terminus at 10:13. I usually don't prefer buses for long distances but we didn't have too many options. The roads were pretty good till Dindigul so didn't feel much tired. Day 1: We saw the first sight of the hills at 07:00am. Our bus stopped for tea in the morning at around 07:40am. The temperature was gradually decreasing as we were climbing. Finally we reached Kodaikanal bus stand at 10:30am. We got a number of a cab driver named Selva at the bus stand whom we could approach for local sightseeing.