the light baggage

  This Post is a part of the Chalukya Trail. Please Click here to read the main post Overview: After lunch at Hangal, we proceeded towards Bankapura towards NH4. Bankapura is a very old town. It is popular for the 11th century Nagareshwara temple. The Chalukya temple was excavated by archaeologists and hence it is below the ground level. The Gopuram of the temple are no longer visible now. This temple again is another example of the Chalukyan art and architecture. The floor plan is similar to other temples built by the Chalukyas. The pillars are carved exquisitely with animals and birds. The ceiling is well carved with lotus design. The temple is popular for its 66 pillars. This temple, though not much damage has been done, has failed to attract tourists. The authorities need to seriously look into this. The temple can be reached through a Peacock reserve which is another attraction in this town. We were fortunate enough to spot a couple of peacocks on the way back. Bankapura f...

  Overview: Yelagiri Hills may not exactly fall in the category of a hill station, but its definitely a stress buster if we make it a 2-day trip so that its good for relaxation as well. This small hillock in Tamil Nadu is quite far from Bangalore as we realised when we set off on our bikes on a very early Sunday morning. We started from our house at around 5am considering the distance. We crossed the Karnataka border very quickly and in no time we were cruising on NH7. On the way to Krishnagiri, we had our breakfast at A2B. At Krishnagiri, we turned left towards Bargur. At around 9:30, we found a board indicating directions for Yelagiri Hills. It was fun riding our bikes along hairpin bends. There are a total of around 14 hair pin bends which lead to the top of the hill. We were greeted by a Tamil Nadu tourism board indicating the places of tourist interest in Yelagiri. Being almost equidistant from both Bangalore and Chennai, this place attracts people from both the cities. Fir...

  This Post is a part of the Chalukya Trail. Please Click here to read the main post Overview: From Haveri our next plan was to visit a small village called Tilvalli. We went via the village of Kaginele, the birthplace of the great saint Kanakadasa. We reached Tilvalli at 12:15pm. It was cloudy so didn't feel the strain so much. The Shanteshwara temple in Tilvalli is not a very huge temple like in Haveri, but it is an ancient temple built by the Chalukyas in the 9th century. Keeping up to the name of the deity, the place is very silent and we cannot see many people around the temple. The architecture is very much similar to the temple in Haveri. Due to the increasing population and building roads, the temple is pushed to a side and is not even visible from the main road. We also saw some inscriptions around the temple but there was nobody to explain about it.       How to reach:   Bus: From Bangalore, there are direct buses to Hangal from Haveri, ...

Overview: Trekking along the "Green Route" was always on my mind and I got a chance to do that with a friend. We decided to keep it a low budget trip as we were fresh from a 3-day trip the previous week. So we decided to go by ordinary KSRTC bus. We reached Kempegowda Bus terminus and enquired about the last bus to Sakleshpur. Finally boarded a Karnataka Sarige bus at 12am. We reached Sakleshpur at 5am in the morning. We started off for Donigal in sometime which was the starting point of our trek. We hired an auto and it took around 15 mins to reach Donigal railway station. We freshened up at the station. Normal passenger trains don't halt at Donigal apart from technical halts. There was one station master at the station and nobody else when we went there. We started our trek from Donigal knowing that it would not be an easy one with over 15+ kms to cover. The beginning of the trek was not too exciting but we had read in other blogs that it gets interesting as the ...