Ticket to Kolara

This trip was a quick pilgrimage in the places around Kolara. I had a crew this time of 6 people. Our prime location was Mulabagilu Anjaneya temple. The places around Kolar have their stories knotted to Ramayana, thanks to cousin Shubha for a timely update about all the places. We added Kotilingeshwara, Kurudumale, and Antaragange to the list and it was a perfect itinerary for the day.

Chikka Tirupati

We left at 8 in the morning from Bengaluru. Our first destination close to Sarjapur was Chikka Tirupati. It’s about 30km journey and we reached the temple at around 9. The temple houses a beautiful idol of God Venkataramana and gave a feel of Tirupati with the sounds of ‘jargandi jargandi’ at the sanctum sanctorum. We were a bit unlucky since it was the time where they cleaned the idols and we couldn’t see them clearly. With hope to arrive again, we left for our next location.

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Kotilingeshwara

It is about 40km from Chikka Tirupati and can be reached via Bangarpet. The special white paani of Bangarpet was quite famous in Bangalore, but we couldn’t find any on our way via its birthplace.

The Kotilingeshwara temple was famous after it was shot in Shree Manjunatha movie. I wished to visit the place ever since I had watched the movie and it literally houses thousands of Shiva Linga. Sadly the place is highly commercialized. Make sure to set aside at least two hours for this place since there is a fixed path inside the premises for the devotees. There is no exit before you visit all the smaller temples inside and the place gets very much crowded on the weekends. The best attraction of the place is the 108ft tall Shiva Linga which reminds us how small we are in this world.

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Mulabagilu

We had a sumptuous meal at Sree Saravana Bhavana on the Bangalore-Tirupati highway and headed next to Mulabagilu Anjaneya temple.

Legend says that after Kurukshetra war, Arjuna went on a pilgrimage and installed the idol in this place. We were at the temple by 2:30 in the noon and waited for a while for the doors to open. A place called Avani which is 10km from here is believed to be the birthplace of Lava-Kusha. We couldn’t visit the place due to the time constraints.

Kurudumale (Koodumale)

Kurudumale is about 10km from Mulabagilu and has a beautiful idol of God Ganapati. The idol is 13ft tall and carved with a single stone. The idol is believed to be very old and the temple around it was built during the Vijayanagara dynasty.

We usually don’t ask for the rains during the travel, but our feet were already burnt by the heated stone flooring in all the temples we had visited in the day. Maybe God heard our prayers and it drizzled a little when we reached Kurudumale. The journey was much pleasant from here onwards.

Adjacent to the Ganesha temple is Someshwara temple which is believed to be built much earlier. The walls have beautiful carvings on them. It has a mixture of two styles by the architects Jakanachari and Dankanachari built during the Chola dynasty. The temple is built without a foundation.

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Antaraganage

This was our last location for the day. This place is on a hilltop and has steps to reach the temple. It has a small stream of water that continuously flows to the pond which then flows downhill. We were exhausted by the time we climbed all the steps and disappointed to see that the pond was dried. But the stream still flowed continuously unaffected by the weather around. One can spot some beautiful butterflies apart from the monkeys which are huge in number. The place is also famous as a trekking spot and for cave exploration which I am planning to set aside for the visit here.

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We bid farewell to Kolar and headed back to Bengaluru humming some old movie songs on the way.

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P.S:
1. All of us on the team were Aam-Aadmi(Mango People). Though we spotted many farms throughout our journey, we didn’t find a single vendor since the fruits weren’t ripe yet. Pick the best time if you are a mango lover too.
2. Special thanks to cousin Madhusudan who made sure we had a comfortable journey with his amazing driving skills.