Temples of the Western plateau

Hi everyone,

Sorry for not writing for a while, our season of visitors is now in full swing!

So, having had New Year and a weekend not doing much we decided another trip was in order for the following weekend.

On Saturday morning we headed off to the Western plateau of Karnataka, about a 4 hour drive from Bangalore. En route, the first stop was Shravanabelagola, a small town with one attraction, a statue of Gommateshvara. I'm not sure it is a deity so to speak, but it he is part of the basis of the Jain faith. Anyway, this statue is said to be the tallest monolithic statue in the world and is 17m tall. 

He certainly is pretty tall! He is positioned on top of a hill next to the town with steps carved all the way up the hill. The book said 700 steps, but I don't think it was anywhere near that, although there were quite a few. 

On the way up

Gommateshvara

The only slight disappointment was that we were under the impression he was just stood on the top of the hill, so you could see him from miles around. But he is actually in a quite high walled temple, so you can only see his head poking out the top and not from that far away. But still pretty impressive!

From there we moved on to Halebid and Belur, both of which are temple towns.  The temples are fairly similar with loads of impressive carvings.

Ben and the Nandi Bull at Halebid

The carvings that covered the outside of the Halebid temple

The columns inside the Halebid temple

One of 4 dancers, one of the things to see in the Belur temple

The elephants at Belur, apparently 644 elephants surround the bottom of  the temple, and they are all different!

After all those sights we headed to our hotel in Hassan for the night. Our efforts to be adventurous at the restaurant proved a little misjudged. I suspect that a Kashmiri nann is a little different if you actually go to Kashmir! 

Nann topped with jam and pineapple, not quite what I was expecting!

Since then we've been pretty busy really, hence the delay in the blog. The following week there was a public holiday for Makara Sankranti (harvest festival). In pretty typical Indian fashion, Ben's company decided on the Monday to change the holiday for the Wednesday to the Thursday so they were in line with all the schools etc. Forward planning does not come naturally! 

Fortunately we were able to keep our plans and Ben just worked on the Thursday instead. We had a good tour of a local winery with an excellent tasting and lunch included. We thought it had a vague nod to the harvest festival about it!

Then no rest for the wicked as I headed up to Delhi to meet Beth (my sister) on the Thursday. 

But more about that next time. 

xKathryn