Solo drive to Shravanabelagola

Bangalore to Shravanbelogola 

About : 

Shravanabelagola is one of the most important Jain centers in the world and is located in  Hassan district of Karnataka state and is famous for its innumerable temples that attract tourists from all over the world. The Shravanabelagola temple is a holy place for the Jains and is world renowned for the majesty of Lord Gomatheeswara towering over everything around. It is one of the holiest places for the Jain community attracting millions of devotees annually.

The 57-feet tall monolithic statue of Gommateshvara is located on Vindyagiri Hill. It is considered to be the world's largest monolithic stone statue.

 

Best time to visit : 

October till February

How far from Bangalore :

Shravanabelagola is around 155KM from Bangalore, It is situated at a distance of 12 km to the south from the Bangalore-Mangalore road (NH-48)

How it went :

Hi I am Karthick residing in Bangalore @ Banashankari 3rd stage, I recently changed my bike to a 150cc Suzuki GS 150R. Enough about myself and you can find you in "about myself". Let start with the trip. 

It was 25th of May 2013, got up @ 4.30 in the morning well it was May but still it was chill @ morning had to take hot bath, did some push ups and physical exercise to survive the long distance ride :) 

It started @ 5:30AM and I found that my driving license is missing, it began with the bad day :( but still I managed to get the duplicate xerox copy packed up water and some biscuits and started towards the bike. Kept the bike for a good couple of minute dealing and started @ a decent pace of 40KMPH and hit the outer ring road to reach Tumkur road, I reached Gurguntepalya in 25min, and stopped @ my regular morning chai point adda near bus-stop had some sips of hot chai and started towards the destination. 

Took the picture of the Dashboard :) of my bike.. Insane...

Well the journey continued till Yediyur around 100km from source point took the second break for another sips of chai near a roadside chai shop and it was early morning 7:00am so could find only one shop opened in the town had no other options, gave a prominent 15min break for my bike to cool and in mean time did some monkey physical activity to relieve from pressure of sitting in one position.Then I started towards belogola all of sudden I remembered I had to take breakfast, I am foodie and love to eat all time, couldn't find the hotel was another 4km so stopped by the road side and started goggling for hotel nearby in my phone and to my surprise I found Mayura Hotel next to the highway which is around 10km away.

NH 48

Cruised towards the hotel at 60kmph and parked at the hotel and had a nice idly-vada and a cup of kaapi. The vada of this hotel is awesome crisp enough to get your mouth to watering. Sorry forgot to take the picture  :(

My Bike GS150R

  I had planned to reach the place by 8am, but its already 7:30am here, so didn't wait for long and started towards the dest.. I crossed bellur cross and raised the accelerator to maintain 90km for a while and I found that the four lane road no more exist, all of sudden the international standard road turned to be a two way road with all sort of potholes and humps. Anyways still maintained some decent pace and while looking for the deviation I missed the cross almost reached channarayapatanna and figured out something went wrong and asked for direction, and I found that I surpassed around 10km, so to my bad day I traveled back again and found the deviation.

This route is too good, its not type of cruising road but really enjoyed the ride with a bit of curves and surpassing the villages, belogola is about 12km from the deviation.

Deviation from Highway

From 2km distance you can make out the monolithic structure of Gommateshwara, it was magnificent. Reached the point and parked the bike near the shade of a shop. 

After a long drive what turned out to be bit scary, Sir Gommata's structure is at the top of the hill, and had to take about 500steps, on the way there were many sculptures written on the boulders which are covered with glass and was written in Kannada.

View of Entrance

Route towards the temple

View of kalyani

    As I started ascending towards the top of the hill, the view turned out to be better, the whole small town of shravanabelogola was under the view of my site and could see the road towards the national highways as well as the one towards Mysore.

     The kalyani looked magnificent from the top and also could see some more temples nearby, I came to know from one of the passer by that there are around 14 temples in shravanabelogala and devotees visit all these temples as the part of darshana. 

I was totally drained off climbing almost 200steps and wanted a break, found a spot and started taking breath. The mild wind created the air cooler effect and really enjoyed it, after taking 5min of break I started towards the temple and finally reached the entrance of the dwara. This place was quite as the number of devotees were very less and the environment was really good with light enchantments of few devotees. Finally made up to the the stambha of the temple and entered the gudi with high spirituality :) This place was very peaceful and very good place to do some dyana, but was distracted from few foreigners with outfit :P

Gommatseshwara

Prayed for the safe ride, got the blessing from the priest and was out of the temple in a while, found a peaceful place around the temple opened up the bag to eat some biscuits packed up again and started descending,  the descending was not easy as I thought, the gravity starts pulling with increase in speed. Carefully made to the foot hill, started the bike towards Bangalore, had to give three drops on the way, one of the guy was horrible and started eating brain pulling out all my ancestral details (cant blame much he a old person) :D

As usual the return journey turns to be boring and had to switch on to the music player, parked bike by the side of the road took the headphone and tunred on the music, on the way towards Hiresave I was scared to hell by the negligent airavata driver never bothered to know few bikers are coming in the single lane road and was chasing the omni @ 100kmph+ nearly missed the accident, to add to the situation had to see a accident of a brand new Duster :( Pulled the bike toward the cane shop which was on the highway side relaxed for a while had a col cane juice. After driving nearly 120km could see the deviation of poona highway, smile on my face and entered Bangalore as expected traffic was eating a lot of time and finally reached home @1pm. Had a great nap till 5pm in the evening :)
 

Bike ride to Shivagange

Bangalore to Shivagange

About:

Shivagange  is a rocky area which is home to many temples and religious sites. There are many natural springs that are found here and the water is said to be sacred. These are known as Gange. Some of the attractions of the site are various temples on the hill and also the stone carving of the Nandi, that has been carved out of a single rock and it is one of the main tourist attractions that can be found in the area. 

This is a hill which looks like the shape of  the Shiva Linga from one of its sides. There are spring water spots found on this hill, it is believed that the water is “Gange” sacred river for Hindus. Hence the name “Shivagange”.  

Best time to visit:

June till September (as the pathala gange would holding the spring water)

How far from Bangalore:

 Shivagange is around 60km from Bangalore on the way toward Tumkur, deviate before dabaspette about 10km, there are good enough number of direction board, cant be lost.

How it went:

  Well this is not a solo ride, one of my colleague named Rajaneesh joined me, about Rajaneesh he is very enthusiastic person in term of travelling by bike, he will be all time ready no matter where the trip would be, sometimes this would be annoying, I had shared the plan with Rajaneesh a couple of days before but till the day of journey he had no idea about where we were going :P. 

Since the distance is around 65km from my place, we thought of starting as late as 6am, I was up by 5:00am in the morning  did some bed excersise and started to get ready. I was ready by 5.30am and started the bike and kept idealing for a min or so. Then started toward the common meeting point at Gurguntepalya, I reached @ exact 6am and had a nice cup of tea at adda. Rajaneesh joined after 15min and offered him a cup hot tea to warm up. Then we started towards our destination.

My bike was very new and was first trip on my new bike, so we had agreed upon a constant speed of 60kmph all the trip :(

So we started ascending the flyover of yeswantpur and we kept descent pace of agreed speed :P we reached nelamangala in another 25min and stopped for a min to see the deviation of managlore highway and it was a beautiful view above the overbridge. Then we started towards the destination, looked into the map and found that we found that we need to take deviation at around 10km straight road.I was totally frustrated ridding the bike 60s, I couldnt take it anymore and hit the gas to top 108kmph on my new bike which had just run 250kms :D. Finally we hit the deviation spot, from there it was 8km drive to

Signboard at NH 4

shivangange. And this drive route was awesome, the road was a village limit road but we were riding at 50kmph, just before 2km from the dest, the hill reagion of shivagange started showing up by the road side, and as the name says this hill looked like shivalinga. We stopped for a while looked at the magnificent view of the hill. 

After a while we reached the gateway of the temple, we thought that was the point were we would need to stop the vehicle, but one of the localite told we can take bike inside, and we reached the footstep of the temple and parked the bike over there and were the first devotees to reach early morning as 7.15am, the temple was not yet completely opened, so we had only option left and we started toward the hill to reach the top of the temple. this is not a kind of trekking place, to reach the top we had to take steps, and we found the going by step is much tougher than what we climbed at other places like savandurga,etc .

View of Shivagange

Shivagange Hills

We had taken only 1litre of water bottle, then we realized that this was not enough for the whole trek. We expected to see some shop in between but it was early morning and none of the shop were open. We took regular interval while ascending the hill, at one place near the big nandi statue we sat for a quite a while as breeze was really good.

Again Rajaneesh being more energetic left me alone and started we will meet later :(I started after 5min and reached the point were I could see rajaneesh going way ahead.

Gave a signal for him to stop and met him, we could see some painted arch and we thought that would be the top. But when we reached the arch, we then figured out that the part of trek we had till then was nothing, the actual trek start after that, the steps become more steep and in some spot it was almost 70degree inclination. But the view from the spot was spectacular, after  climbing for nearly 10min we found a shop and just bought some cool drinks and chips, and we thanked god :) We started wondering how this person could get more thank 50kg of items on his shoulder when were not able get ourself to this height. Anyways we took a bottle of sprite, Rajaneesh and I had a sip and I held the bottle and started toward the temple located at the top, we had read that there are lot of monkeys would interrupt, but we hadn't find anyone till now, all of sudden while thinking a monkey snatched the bottle and took it away, and it was brilliant enough to open the cap and started drinking the sprite. Blamed for being stupid and carrying bottle when I knew monkey would be around any point of point, anyhow still we haven't reached the top, we took rest in between and reached the top finally, the was too good.

Midway View

View from top

firstly we went inside the shiva temple had the blessing and had cold drink inside the temple itself and started looking into the ancient writing on papers. We laid down at the place for a while by this time I was hungry, but Rajaneesh didn't wanted to have any snacks, so we decided to descend.

View while descending

The descend was not so easy, being steps we had to me more careful and we took enough rest in between and reached the foothill and had nice cane juice by this time all the shops were opened, the gangadhareshwara temple was also opened and we got the blessing too, it was the cave temple and temperature was high inside ans started sweattting, we came out as it started getting crowded , then we moved toward the pathala ganaga, but since this was may month we couldn't see any water, so we left the place and reached to our bike, we started and decided to go to nearby hotel. But in search of hotel near the highway we continued our journey and we made it upto nelemangala and didn't see any good hotel, later Rajaneesh told home is only 30km away we will better go home,  as he said didn't stop anywhere, by this time traffic was upto mark and we reached gurguntepalya in 40min or so, waved bye to Rajaneesh and I moved towards my home @ Banashankari.