The Trip through Pics

The Lord Ganesha temple situated near to Kukke Subrahmanya temple. (left).

A bird's eye view of the nature from the Bahubali's statue situated in Dharmasthala (below).


A scene depicting the history of Mother Ganga's flow to earth with the help of Lord Siva (below).
Udupi Sreekrishna Temple Gopura.
Lord Harihara as sceen on the Gopura of Kumbakshi Harihara temple (left). A scene of Maravanthe beach (above). A very old "Rath" in Gokarna (right).

Temple X: Kateel

From Kumbakshi we directed towards Kateel which is a beautiful place situated near Mangalore. The way is enriched with greenary and hills and that journey was a wonderful experience. We reached the place by 1.30 PM and we rushed to the temple. We saw that a small elephant is ringing a huge bell with its tusk. We all wnt inside the temple and that was the time of "Mangalarathi". After the darshan of Goddess Durga, we all roam around that area for sometime.

Kateel temple is located in the middle of river Nandini. The river is coming from Kanakagiri and joins the sea on Pravanje. The name Kateel is a joint form of two words 'Kati' means centre (centre of the river) and 'illa' means area. The legend says that Saint Jabali cursed the daughter of Kamadhenu, Nandini and hence Nandini is flowing as a river in earth. The remady for the curse is that Goddess Durga will give blessings to her later. The area is full of greenary. Thousands of devotees are coming to this temple everyday. The temple management is distributing free lunch for all the devotees.

We all had our lunch in the temple and then left from Kateel. We then reached Mangalore by around evening 4 O'clock and directly went to Kadroli Gokarnanatha temple. It is a temple built recently with modern architecture. A huge Marriage hall, a garden, a pond etc. are main attractions here. All are newly built and still the construction going on. You will be able to see two huge elephant staues in front of the temple. Once you enter inside, you can see Lord Siva's family followed by a huge statue of Lord Nandikeshwara. Then Sree Krishna advising Gita to Arjuna is also carved over there.

From there we left immediately and came to the railway station. Everyone except me and my cousin left from there to Kerala by train and both of us came back to Bangalore with a lot of immemmorable events going on in our mind.

A really wounderful journey through the soul of Western Ghats of the great state Karnataka!!!!

Temple IX: Kumbakshi (Anne Gudde)

The fourth day started with the holy bath in Souparnika river. Heavy rain was there out-side and all of us went to the river shore. We had to walk almost one kilometer from the lodge to reach the river where we saw that the river is flowing with a roaring sound. The river was in brown color because of the rain and water is very cold. We all took bath in that ice-cold water and came back. After having Darshan in the temple, we departured from Kollur towards Kundapura.

From Kundapura we had our break-fast and directed towards Kumbakshi. This is a small village situated on the way between Udupi and Kundapura on the National Highway. A very old Lord Ganesha temple is situated here. Other temples situated in the same area are Lord Ayyappa temple, Lord Harihara temple, and Lord Lakshmi Narayana temple.

We reached Annegudde by around 10 O'clock. The rush was less on that day and hence we got a very good darshan. After that we went to the Lord Ayyappa temple which is relatively newly formed. It is constructued in a similar way as Sabarimala is. There are 18 holy steps created which will be opened only when the steps are open in Sabarimala, Kadatta Swamy and Karuppa Swamy on both sides and the idol is also similar. There we have a small Devi temple and a place where all "Navagrahas" are installed separately. Each "Navagraha" along with the tree associated with It, is also maintained there.

Another peculiarity of this place is monkeys. You will be able to see a lot of monkeys over there. We were lucky enough to see a monkey family also. From there we stepped down a lot of steps to reach the bottom of the "Gudde" (means hill) where the Harihara temple and Lakshminarayana temple are situated. The Harihara temple is a unique temple that both Siva and Vishnu (as Mohini) in the same idol. Another charecteristic of this temple is that, this temple is surrounded by a pond.

After the darshan, we all hurried towards Kateel which we heard will be closed by 1.30 PM.......

Temple VIII: Hattiyangadi (Via Maravanthe)

From Murdeswara, we proceeded towards the Hattiyangadi Ganesha Temple. On the way is the scenic beauty Maravanthe. You will feel the difference once you reach this place. The sea-wind is so huge that even drivers will close the glass of the window near to them. The wind contains water particles and is very hot in nature. There is no much shops or houses in this place except some temporary buildings.

In this place, one side of the national highway is Arabian sea and the other side is Souparnika river. Water on both sides. We stayed there for some time. Most of us went to the sea shore. Huge stones are laid across the sea shore to create a boundary between sea and road. The river is coming towards the sea, abruptly deviates from there and flowing back. It reaches the sea after a few miles. Another speciality of that river as per the people ofthat locality is that, the water in that river is not salty in nature even though it is flowing only some meters away from the sea.

After spending a few time over there, we left for Hattiyangadi. From the national highway we took a deviation towards left and reached Hattiyangadi. It is an eighth century Sri Siddivinayaka temple. The temple is situated on the banks of the river Varahi. The diety is of Bala Ganesha having just two hands holding lots of Modakas on one hand. An interesting fact is that the idol is growing every year. It is clear from the fact that the silver casting is now slightly smaller that the idol. Thirty-two Ganapathi idols as explained in Mudgala Purana are installed in the temple premises.

As we reached there in the evening, we took darshan there and then left from there. We reached back Kollur in the evening. That night we all went to the Kollur temple again got very nice Darshan. Later after finishing our dinner, we stayed in the same lodge that night.