An incomplete guide to Hoysala temples ;-)

MOSALE

Hassan, at 6.00am, it was quite exceptionally foggy…

We checked out of the room and were on our way to Mosale by around 6.30am. There are two temples to be covered here, Chennakesava and Nagareshwara.

Close to Mosale…

Temples in the mist…

Drove through the village, parked in front of the temple and while I was taking pics, Sangeetha went in search of the temple priest. This was turning out to be a routine to find temples locked when we reached. Sangeetha would track down the person who had the keys…

It is supposed to be auspicious to look at the Shivaling from between Nandi’s ears, i.e. as close as you can get to Nandi’s perspective…

The priest of the adjacent Chennakesava temple was a small kid, ‘Srinivas’, who was chanting all the shlokas quite clearly and walked us in and around the temples…

NUGGEHALLI

After completing Mosale we drove back to Hassan and took the road towards CR Patna. Stopped for breakfast at a Kamat Upachar enroute and proceeded towards Nuggehalli. We intended to cover the Lakshminarasimha and the Sadashiva temples.

The Sadashiva temple…

The temple was being used for conducting some school exams. I remember going to a temple prior any important exams, this was one step ahead, write exams in a temple!

Oh God! Please let me remember what subject is this?… I don’t remember attending this class at all… must have slept through all the sessions…

The Lakshminarasimha temple…

The stone which talks about the history of the temple…

GOVINDANAHALLI

Govindanahalli was a little difficult to track down; somebody pointed us towards a route that went to a ‘Govinahalli’, which sounds quite similar. However we were lucky to find this board along the way, which indicated that Govindanahalli was actually a different place, but it was nearby.

After driving through a narrow mud road for about a kilometer, we reached Govindanahalli and found the Panchalingeshwara temple. As usual, it was locked!

Same old story here too… temple locked, found priest/caretaker’s house, he was not at home, a lady from his house cae along to open the temple for us.

The Panchalingeshwara temple…

This is quite a big temple, with 5 garbagrihas, 5 lingas, 5 Nandis, 5 gopurams, all in a line, inside the same structure…

Took some pics, walked around the complex and then headed off towards our next destination Kikkeri.

KIKKERI

Kikkeri is on the main Hassan-Mysore road. The Brahmeshwara temple here is special because it has carvings of Madanikas (Dancing girls) like in Belur, however many of them are in pristine condition. The few missing ones are supposedly in some museums abroad. This is a good place to see some intact examples of exquisite Hoysala sculptures.

The temple is located on the banks of a river / lake…

Ok, same story… temple locked… Sangeetha tracked down the person who had the key, whose house was a few 100 mts away from the temple… There was some difficulty in opening the temple since there was a big bunch of similar looking keys, finally we were in!

Ok, looks like the board indicating that this is a protected monument needs some protection…

As mentioned earlier, the intact Madanika statues…

Took some pics outside the temple…

We got directions to our next destination Hosaholalu and headed off…

HOSAHOLALU

Hosaholalu is around 2 Kms from KR Pet. There is a Lakshminarayana temple here that was on our list.

The Lakshminarayana temple…

We were also given suggestions to visit a place called ‘Kallhalli’ which is supposed to have an exquisite 18ft tall Varahanarasimha idol. However there was some confusion about the route and distance etc. So we dropped it.

Since it was around 2.30pm by the time we wound up from Hosaholalu, we had lunch in KRpet and headed off towards Mysore/Srirangapatna and onwards to our last destination for this trip; Somanathapura.

SOMANATHPURA

The route from near Srirangapatna to Somanathapura is not in such a great condition and our average speeds were down to the 40s / 50s.

We expected that Somanathapura temple would be open till late evening, however the temple shuts down at 5.30pm and we reached the place at 4.15pm. That gave us a little more than an hour to walk around.

We were probably the last visitors to walk out of the temple that day and headed back towards Mysore road. Reached Bannur and took the road to Maddur.

Spotted this sign on the way… As it flashed past us, I thought I had read it wrong, so reversed and drove back to the sign to see that it indeed said ‘New York’!

I have seen a Singapura near Davanagere, a Timbuktoo on the way to Hyderabad… and now I found a ‘New York’ around 7 Kms from Maddur on the Bannur road…

We reached the Bangalore-Mysore road and turned towards Bangalore. Reached the Kamat Lokaruchi by around 7.45pm and stopped for a delicious dinner, before returning home.