Day trip from Bengaluru to Nanjangud & near by temples

At last, time has come to tick Nanjangud from my “must visit” section of the bucket list. After few postponements earlier this year, Viji and I suddenly decided last Friday that we rent a car and just go the next day.   Plan was to visit Nanjangud temple and cover some of the nearby off the beaten track heritage temples:- Lakshmikantha in Hedathale, Venugopalaswamy in Hemmaragala  & Lakshmikantha in Kalale and  maybe Ranganathaswamy temple in Shrirangapattana if time permits. Booked the car/Etios@11 Rs/km from a reliable taxi operator from my neighborhood (Kiran Coffee works).

After initial hiccups like the  taxi not showing up on time, off we went by 7:15 AM on Jun 3, 2017. Late by 30 minutes but the car, AC & ride was comfortable.  Stopped at Kamat Yatri Nivas in Ramanagar for breakfast and was shocked at the crowd and waiting line! (Never seen this kind of rush in this place before) We were told this is how it is during weekends as it is the most popular joint for anyone travelling to Mysore and beyond … luckily since we were only 2 people, got the table within 10min and it was another 10min to take order, disappointed to hear they had just run out of kotte kadabu  & It was only 8:15 AM! 😭, had jackfruit leaf kadabu/idli and vadee – Do not recommend coming here on weekends unless you have patience for the  wait & slow service. We continued our journey towards Mysore.  It was a beautiful sunny morning with blue sky full of broken white clouds reminded us of Monet’s paintings.
I recalled my first visit to Nanjangud few decades back as a teenager for a State level Table Tennis Tournament, vaguely remember staying in a huge room with many players and me refusing to go for a temple visit. I cannot believe, it is on my "must see" bucket list now 😊! Ahh! "that thing called time"... Nanjangud is approx 170 KM from Bangalore and 25 KM from Mysore.  

This is a very ancient town and is referred to as Garalapuri in the Puranas, Nanjangudu has been praised as a holy place sanctified by Parasurama and Gauthama. Parashurama, it is said, prayed for the grace of Srikanteshwara to expiate himself of the sin of beheading his mother Renuka. This place is also referred as Dakshina Kashi. We reached Srikanteshwara temple by 10:30 AM.  

The Srikanteshwara temple is one of the biggest temples in Karnataka. It has an area of about 560 sq. meters & is built in Dravidian style, near to the river Kapila. It is 385 ft long and 160 ft wide. The small sanctum (garbha-griha) was the earliest and built during the period of the Gangas or the Cholas (about 11th Century AD). The main Shivalingam is about 1m high.The anterior mantapa in which the devotees sit was a later addition during the Hoysala period of the 13th Century AD. The next stage of construction took place during the Vijayanagara period. During this period, brick and mortar sikhara was constructed over the shrine. In fact, there is an inscription of Krishnadevaraya in this temple. The next stage of development took place during the period of Mysore Wodeyars, Dalavayis (Chiefs) of Kalale and Dewan Purnaiah. Actually most of the new constructions took place during the period of Krishnaraja Wodeyar III.

Most prominently, the brick and mortar gopura was built in 1845. This massive gopura is 120 ft high and is built in seven tiers. At the top of the gopura are seven gold-plated Kalasas, each about 10ft in height. Another attraction is the huge stone bull which is 8ft in height. This was established by Dalavayi Vikramaraya in 1644. At its front is the Tulabhara mantapa. The ritual of weighing the devotees against any commodity is done here. Generally people weigh themselves against rice, jaggery, sugar etc.This temple has 3 main deities, Lord Nanjundeshwara, Goddess Parvathi and Lord Vishnu with Sridevi and Bhudevi. The Shivalinga is about 1 m in height. There are many other deities and there are sixty six Idols of Shaiva saints called as Nayamnars. There are more than 100 lingas in the temple complex.  It is also said that Tippu Sultan called idol as Hakim Nanjunda and gifted an emerald Linga and a valuable emerald necklace as offerings for having cured his favorite elephant of an eye disease.

Temple complex is admirable!  It has an air of old well maintained temple. There was not much crowd (Sunday, Monday and holidays should be avoided if you want to give crowd/rush a miss).  All the deities are very beautiful! Glad finally made it to this magnificent temple! After leisurely dharshan we bought ladoo prasada at the counter.   There are few Jathra that happens every year during different festival time. If interested, one can contact temple & its website for details. Temple outer complex has paid toilets and accommodation available for overnight stay. There is a lunch hall which provides 3 meals a day for free. Beauty about Karnataka well know temples are they are  clean, provide free good meal as prasada and there are no priests who hassles you to perform pooja or ask money.  To me this is the biggest differentiator between Karnataka temples and rest of India!  

From here we travelled towards two Hoysala temples - Venugopalaswamy in Hemmaragala  (also known as Santhana vengugopala) and Lakshmikantha temple in Hedathale.  Both of these are in Chamarajnagar route 12-13 km from Nanajungud and a kilometer apart.  En-route we could see farmers getting ready for monsoon which is around the corner.
First we visited Venugopalaswamy temple -   History says, king Gangarasa  of Ganga arasaru  found a buried idol of Lord Krishna and  brought it to Maharishi Koundinya to get the idol installed. The temple later came under the leadership of the ‘Hoysalas’. king Veera Ballala further donated lands to the temple in the year 1298 AD. This temple is of Hoysala architecture at the Garbhagriha, but the outer structure is of Vijayanagar times.

The entrance to the temple is covered but after crossing the main gopura, you enter a big compound which houses the main temple.  There is a Udbhava Narasimha on a pillar which is amazing! The main idol of Shri Krishna in standing pose is charming in his ‘Tribhangi Avatara/Tribhangi Kolalu Gopala’. The Utsavamurthy is also very pretty. There are couple of very Interesting things in this temple – An ant hill behind the garbhagudi  which is also worshiped and a “Danda/stick” ; story goes “The danda is believed to contain the powers of Maharishi Koundinya who transferred it onto this sacred danda to help the people who are in need as he was beginning to depart to the heavenly abode”.
Outside the main temple there is a really huge stone planter with Tulasi plant and a large king size stone bed with four legs intact. Wonder what it was used for.

Our temples have so much history, legends and stories; it makes your visit even more interesting! Today there was some village festival here and hence it was little crowded.  Not sure if this is daily or only today. Priest was distributing “Pongal” prasada in a big dhonne/cup, it was very Yummy!  Viji had a creative idea of making dry mango leaf as a spoon… J

We proceeded to Lakshmikantha temple. From outside the gate we could see it is a very well maintained complex.  This 12^th century Hoysala temple has Vishnu/Lakshmikantha in the center and Lakshmi Narasimha and Venugopala idols on sides.  Idols are extremely graceful in jet black stone! There is also a radiant  idol of Andal.

 The specialty of this idol is that in normal light it looks like an ordinary idol, but while performing puja, priest asked the lights to be switched off and when he placed the arathi  near the forehead, the eyes of Andal look real and seems like looking straight into our eyes. Very unique! Only temple where we were allowed to take photograph inside. Priest was saying not many people come to this temple. I wanted to hear interesting stories about this temple as there were only 2 of us and another lady who was there before us and was getting some pooja performed.  Unfortunately, the priest after performing pooja was so immersed talking to that lady about her problems out in the open…J we felt uncomfortable & just left. I know privacy in India is a rare commodity but this much...??

Later I read, in this temple’s mantapa there is a vantage point from where you can see all the idols from one spot. Next time before temple visit, I must remember in India, we get information about any heritage temples mostly from Smriti  "that which is remembered," refers to a body of Hindu texts usually attributed to an author, traditionally written down but constantly revised and from  Shrutis (the Vedic literature) considered authorless, that were transmitted verbally across the generations and fixed.

 From here we went to another Hoysala temple– Lakshmikantha in Kalale built around 17^th-18^th AD. This is temple is now under archeology Dept and is preserved.  Unfortunately it was closed for afternoon.  It closes from 1:30 to 6:30PM, so we had just missed by 10min!   This is one big problem in most of the temples under Govt control/Mujaraye , they all close for long hours in the afternoon.  This temple had many big chariots fully covered outside the main temple. Here too they have many Jathras/temple fair throughout the year! One of the temple officials who saw us pretended to call priest to open for us and said he cannot reach the priestJ.  Here too, not many tourists come.  We decided to head back to Nanjangud for lunch - nothing to write about, a simple plate meal!

We drove towards SriRangapattana & reached Sri Ranganathaswamy temple  at 3:00 PM.  Temple was closed till 4:00, since we had an hour to spend, guard at the temple suggested we visit “Nimishamba temple” which is 4 km from this temple in the village Ganjam.   There was a big fair happening near the temple street selling mostly fruits and vegetables which looked very fresh.  En-route to the temple we saw lot of rose farms and apparently this place is popular for locally made Gulcan/Rose jam! Of course we bought a bottle. Tastes pretty good! But, I doubt they use pure honey and maybe substitute with sugar .

Nimishambha temple on the banks of river Cavery is built by Mummadi  Krishnaraja Wodeyar during 1610-38AD. It is believed Nimishambha will clear all problems and issues of devotees within minutes and hence the name.  A very lovely idol and in front of it is Srichakra.  A nice temple to visit with Cavery at footsteps!  We saw lot of vendors selling greens and especially Eggplant/Brinjal which looked very healthy and fresh!  Later I heard from a friend, they are the best Brinjals you can get and extremely tasty! Hmm…there is always a next time J

We headed towards Ranganatha temple. The main deity here is Lord Ranganatha who is a manifestation of Lord Vishnu. Idol is in resting posture on a bed of serpent Aadi Sesha. It is said that this is one of the biggest idols of Lord Vishnu in the reclining posture. Idol of Goddess Lakshmi beside Lord’s feet can also be seen. Goddess Ranganayaki is considered to be the principal goddess here. Other shrines inside the temple complex are Srinivasa, Ranganayaki, Rama, Narasimha, Sudarshana, Panchamukha Anjaneya and Gopalakrishna.. It is one of the five important pilgrimage sites (called Pancharanga khestra) along the river Kaveri for devotees of Ranganatha. Since Srirangapatna is the first temple starting from upstream, the deity is known as Adi Ranga

The inner portion of the  Ranganatha temple was built in 894 A.D by a lady by the name Hambi, of the class of dancers. During Ganga rule, the Navaranga mantap and the temple of Lord Thirumala(Srinivasa) at the left side portion of the great Mahadwara was constructed. In the year 1117 A.D when Sri Ramanuja came to this part which was under Hoysala rule after escaping from the cholas, Sri Ramanuja got Bittideva converted to a Vaishnava and named him Vishnuvardhana.   Temple was further expanded with lot of land during this time & later under Vijayanagara rulers constructed the inner prakara in the temple five steps at the big gate and 2 stone elephants on both sides.  Hyder Ali & Mysore wodeyars have contributed to the expansion of the temple

It was only 4:00 PM but could not believe the long...line. We stood in the line for about 45 min or more for dharshan.   Here the temple is crowded weekends, so you can hardly stand in front of the idol for a second. An excellent temple complex in Hoysala & Vijayanagar architectural style.  Outside the temple on the temple street , there are lot of vendors on both sides selling all sort of interesting things!

Time to head back to Bengaluru.  What timing! As soon as we got in the car, it started raining. Back home by 8:00 PM after a total of 423 KM. WOW! What a lovely day trip! Do visit these fantastic temples – I think I have used a lot of applicable synonyms for the adjective beautiful in this post J J 

Blessed to have had great rulers in Karnataka:-Gangas, Hoysalas, Vijayanagara and Mysore Wodeyars who have contributed & nourished art, architecture & culture immensely.  Look at us now, our rulers in Karnataka – Forget about creating, they are so busy destroying the heritage and natural resources for their greed! Wasn't it just last week our Karnataka Govt was ready to close 3/4th of a 350 year old temple tank to accommodate a private land developer? Hope we preserve what is left of our heritage!