One of the many ruined sculptures

The hillock has 14 Jain basadis which were constructed along a wide timeline in the history – Chandragupta Basadi was constructed by Emperor Ashoka in 3rd century BCE, and was dedicated to his grandfather Chandragupta Maurya. Another basadi ‘Savatigandhavarana basadi‘ was constructed by Queen Shantala, wife of Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana. It is said that Chandragupta Maurya traveled down to Shravanabelagola after abdicating the throne along with his spiritual guru Bhadrabahu. Both the guru and the disciple performed penance on top of Chandragiri and ended their days in ‘sallekhana‘ (religious ritual of suicide by fasting practiced in Jainism).

A view of the temple complex

Chandragiri as seen from Vindhyagiri

Along with the statues and basadis on top of Chandragiri, there are also stone scripts scattered around. One of the prominent one is by poet Ranna (one of the earliest and one of the greatest poets of the Kannada literature) in his handwriting and also by his brother Jinavallabha. And one last but interesting tidbit is about Chavundaraya, the minister in Ganga dynasty who commissioned the sculpting the huge monolith of Gommateshvara. It is said that he was asked (in his dream) to climb Chandragiri, go to a point and shoot an arrow southwards. And the legend is that place where the arrow stuck on Vindhyagiri is the foot of the 57 feet statue of Gommateshwara. The place where Chavundaraya shot the arrow is still accessible on top of Chandragiri.

In case if you visited Shravanabelagola but missed paying a visit to the Chikka betta as its locally called, don’t make that mistake again when you visit next time. :)

What next?
Though I have been travelling on day trips or weekend trips, writing my experiences has been sporadic and sometime I’ve gone into complete hibernation for long periods. Thanks to my recent job change and other personal priorities, I am stuck & grounded with less time to travel & much less time to write. And I don’t see myself planning any bigger travel plans. But however, I’m hopeful of turning that around and here is my plan of action for next few months -

• Write more and more frequently. And complete all the pending drafts.
• Start with a that small project of a series of travel stories which I have in my mind for a long time
• Explore Karnataka on day trips and weekend getaways as I used to do before.
• Go on long rides – Cycle more and more
• Revive the dormant Kannada version of Payaniga.

Here is a big thank you to everyone who has been part of this long journey – all the readers, friends who travelled with me, fellow travellers/travel bloggers who have inspired me and my family who are very supportive of all of my endeavours. Here is to more and more travelling. :)

BTW if you are on Facebook, follow PAYANIGA page or if you are on Twitter you can follow me there as well to keep yourselves updated.

Background image: Dunnottar Castle, Stonehaven Scotland.

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Disclaimer: This is a sponsored guest post.

Background image: Vindhyagiri (most commonly known as Dodda betta), Shravanabelagola.

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5. Tolquhon Castle: I stumbled upon this Tolquhon castle (pronounced as ‘toh-hon’) when I was searching for a place to explore on my cycle over a weekend. Finally I ditched the idea of riding as my friends too got interested in visiting and we drove down to the castle. Constructed in 16th century, this small ruined castle is hidden within the countryside in Aberdeenshire. Though very close to Aberdeen, the castle is secluded and very less frequented by the visitors. With fields on all four sides, the view from the castle is eye soothing. And if you are in luck and visiting the place during harvest season of rapeseed plant, you are bound to be in the middle of yellow sea.

4. Balmoral Castle: Constructed in 14th century, Balmoral Castle comes with a huge estate of close to 50,000 acres and is one of the residences of the British Royal Family. Situated on the banks of river Dee, the estate contains a wide variety of landscapes and well maintained flora. For someone who love long strolls or sitting by the riverside and have a leisurely time, Balmoral is the right place.

3. Balvenie Castle: Though the name Balvenie is known to Scotch lovers, many might not know that it gets the name from Balvenie castle. It had snowed the previous night I visited. With everything in the vicinity painted white, the castle stood-out in the frame. Situated on the outskirts of Dufftown, it overshadows the Balvenie distillery and is neighbour of Glenfiddich, the world’s best-selling single malt. This is the place to enjoy the view of the castle with an 18 year old single malt to accompany.

2. Dunnottar Castle: A castle which comes with a beautiful view. Situated on the outskirts of Stonehaven, is a ruined medieval fortress. With sea breeze caressing us, a day out on a sunny day is worth every second spent there.

1. Urquhart Castle: Along with a wonderful view, this castle gets an upper hand with an added mystery of Nessie monster. Yet another ruined castle, was first built on the banks of Loch Ness in 13th century. With plenty of cruise services around, it makes a nice getaway spending time searching the mysterious Nessie monster.

Though most of the castles I visited dates back to medieval to 13th-14th century and ruined completely, they are very well maintained by the National Trust for Scotland. If someone wants to visit these castles, it is obvious that one ends up paying up entrance fee in most of these places. Better idea is buying the tickets to these castles online using a credit card which gives some discounts to the buyer.

Manchanabele is one of the places visited by most of the bird enthusiasts living in Bangalore. During one of the days when I was interested in birding, I joined Shashank to visit Manchanabele. While we were running behind the birds, an old man from the nearby village approached us and there started the conversation between me and the old man while Shashank was trying to photograph a Golden Oriole which was perched on a tree. Keeping an eye on the Golden Oriole, Shashank was more interested in our conversation. Below is the conversation scripted by him.

Lost in conversation – Me (6 years ago) and the old man. (Photo and text by Shashank)

Old Man: So, you people are photographing eh?

Shashank: Ok, at least let me snap a picture of yours.

The conversation stopped as abruptly as it started. This was one of those many conversations I was involved wherein my situation is nothing different than a clueless fish trying climb a tree :)

Background image: Lost in the Western ghats – en route Narasimha Parvatha.

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Any mistake can be forgiven for a view like this :)

Like most of the trek plans materialise, a plan to trek Kumara Parvatha happened during coffee break in office. It was end of June 2007, monsoon at it’s peak. We were somehow didn’t want to wait till end of monsoon since KP was eluding all of us except one. The one who had trekked Kumara Parvatha earlier kept on teasing us with his stories of all of his 7-8 trips. Dates decided, route discussed, responsibilities split up – we were all set to go. I took care of food for all five of us. Another friend took the responsibilities arranging the tents. And our KP expert took care of transportation (booking tickets on the state transport bus). D-Day approached, on Friday evening with all our backpacks loaded in the bus we settled into our seats. After an hour of excited chit-chatting we dozed off dreaming about camping on top of Kumara Parvatha.

It was still dark, around 4 AM when we got down from the bus at our destination. With the tea shop just opening up, we crossed the road to get some coffee and also information to reach the starting point of the trek. Here is the conversation that happened -

One of Us: When is the first bus to Kumara parvatha?
Shopkeeper (with a puzzled look): There is no mountain here in the surrounding.


Now it was our turn to return the puzzled look to him and other customers. And still we pressed on and our KP expert chipped in -

OoU: How can that be? I've come here and trekked the mountain 7-8 times.
SK: I've lived my whole life, there is no Kumara Parvatha near this place. Ask anyone here.
OoU (little bit of more info doesn't hurt): It's also called Pushpagiri. Lot of people come here fore trekking.
SK: Oh! Pushpagiri! That is close to 100KMs from here! Why did you come here instead of taking a bus to Somwarpet?


That’s when it stuck us that we took a wrong bus to Virajpet, instead of Somwarpet. We were some 100 KMs away from our starting point instead of some 25KMs from Somwarpet. In all our excitement, we forgot to check & confirm the place we were supposed to reach and we were left with no other option to wait for 2 hours to catch first bus to Madikeri and then to Somwarpet.

With all this goof-up and extra journey, we managed to reach our starting point at around 1PM instead of 8 in the morning. We tried to trek in the incessant drizzle though we got late, but had to abort. We were half way through when it started getting dark and realized it’ll be difficult to pitch our tents late in the night with wind & rain. Here is the story of that futile attempt. Though slightly disappointed, we came back home with a different kind of adventure, plenty of leech bites, and a story to remember & laugh whenever we meet. It has been five and half years since this incident & I’m yet to trek Pushpagiri. And I am not sure whether I’ll go there again!

Wishing all the readers a very happy near year.

Background image: Getting drenched in drizzle on top of Mandalapatti peak, Coorg.

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Image courtesy: Wikipedia

4. Kokoda Trail: An year ago I got hold of a book by Rob Lilwall, ‘Cycling Home from Siberia’ – an epic journey cycling close to 50,000 KMs in three years covering half of the world. His journey started from the icy cold Siberia (as the title indicates) via Japan, China, almost all of the South East Asian countries and then to Australia via Papua New Guinea. From there back to his home England traversing through India, South Asian countries, Europe. His journey in Papua New Guinea caught my eye where he took the Kokoda trial which is known for being the location of the second World War battle between the forces of Japan and Australia. The 96KMs single-file foot trail has become an annual endurance running race. Hope to walk along that path one day.

Image courtesy: Wikipedia

2. Antwerp: The very first project I worked in my carrier was for a Belgian client. And as part of task we had to enter a valid address in to the application we were testing. We were given a dummy address with a valid postcode of Antwerp. After using that address for more than two years, it started feeling as if it’s an address of a friend or someone. Till date all I know about Antwerp is that, it is a small city in Belgium. And I don’t have a clue about place except its name. I’ve decided to keep that way until I the day I start towards Antwerp – a little surprise stashed away.

1. Gabbar’s Ramanagara: A surprising entry from the list and no prizes why it got added. Probably this is the oldest entry in the list going back close to 20 years. Being so close to Bangalore and passing through the town countless number of times, I’m yet to explore those rocky hills where Gabbar walked around once. Every time I travel to Mysore, I make a promise to myself to visit Ramanagara next time for sure and that promise is being renewed for a long time now, recent one being just 2 months ago. Here is a new promise to myself not to renew the old promise :)

And for the time being I’ll go back to reading and dreaming!