the light baggage

  Overview: After visiting Belur and Halebid, I had almost concluded that there can't be a better marvel by the Hoysalas. But after doing some research and reading some blogs by travel gurus, I thought why not visit other legacies which the Hoysalas have left behind.. I did few trips to cover a few places but still I could not cover all the heritage sites. Below is the map showing Hoysala temples in different parts of Karnataka. Mostly concentrated along the Malnad region. I will publish each of the places in the map below in the coming weeks and link it to this main post. Kaidala:         Chennakeshava temple Somnathpura: Chennakeshava temple Harihar:            Harihareshwara temple Basaralu:          Mallikarjunaswamy temple Bhadravati:      Lakshminarasimhaswamy temple Anekere:      ...

   Overview: Bangalore has always been a city of interest to me. One summer day I decided to capture all four towers installed in different parts of Bangalore by the Chieftain Kempegowda- I to mark the outer boundaries in the 15th century. Though in present day Bangalore all the towers fall well within city. 11am, Lalbagh: Had to buy tickets and get inside the Botanical Gardens. Perched on top of the Peninsular Gneiss, the first Kempegowda tower of the day. This marked the Southern tip of Bangalore. Probably the easiest of all the towers to locate, as it is inside the Lalbagh and is visible from the KH Double road. 3pm, Ulsoor Lake: Though we are not allowed to go near this Kempegowda tower as the area belongs to the Madras Sappers, we could capture it from the main road. This tower marked the eastern tip of Bangalore.  To spot this tower, proceed from MG road towards Trinity circle, take left towards Old Madras road, cross the Gurudwara and continue on the same ro...

  Overview: Continuing from the previous post , from Trivandrum we hired a taxi and headed towards Kanyakumari which is around 3 hours from Trivandrum. We hired an Innova and the road leading to Kanyakumari is not a typical highway and it looked so crowded as if we haven't left the city at all. We visited the famous Suchindram temple on the way which is very popular among tourists. We saw the huge Kalyani tank and the big Gopuram typical of Tamil Nadu temples. It has a very popular legend which can be read in the reference provided below. We reached Kanyakumari at around 8pm and checked into a hotel there.    Day 3: Being in Kanyakumari, one cannot afford to miss the elegant sunrise. So we started the day very early and headed towards the sunrise point at around 4:30am in the morning. And I must tell that it did not look like 4:30am at all looking at the huge crowd gathered at the place to get the first rays of sun on them. We waited patiently for the Sun God to show i...

  Overview: We had been planning to visit Kanyakumari since long and when my brother was in Trivandrum for some training, we got a chance to visit him and also visit Kanyakumari. So we started off on a 3-day trip down south. Day 0: We boarded the Trivandrum express from Bangalore at around 6:00pm. Day 1: We woke up in the morning and was a really good sight outside with backwaters and coconut trees all around. We reached Trivandrum in the morning at around 11:00am. After relaxing for a while, we went to the Thiruvallam backwaters just at the outskirts of Trivandrum. Enjoyed a lazy boat ride to the sea shore and spent sometime in the sands watching the sea. We then came back and visited one of my aunts at the Ramakrishna Sarada Mission in Trivandrum. Spending an hour there, we set off towards the bus stand where we met my brother who came after his office. Trivandrum is not a typical capital city with hustle bustle and looks like any small town.We signed off for the day with this....