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 :)