Trip to Chikka Tirupati, Kotilingeshwar, Kolar Antara Gange, Bangaru Tirupati

August 15th weekend was a golden chance for many people for traveling to respective native places or a short trip with family and friends. In my case going to native place was not an option as three days are needed only for traveling! (Considering train travel as the only option as air travel with family now is out of budget ;) ). Planning for a journey more than 5-6 hrs was also not possible as we have a small baby. Hence the only option was to go to some place nearby. This time we wanted to go for some temple tour in Kolar. Kolar is a district head quarter which is around 70 km from Bangalore. I was at this place doing my Diploma during 1997-1999, so this plan would also serve to refresh my memories after 9 years. The day was August 15th which we decided to tour. My friend Dillip and his wife joined us.

We hired a Qualis and started at 7.00 AM in the morning straight away to Chikka Tirupati. From net I found around 3 routes to reach place but we took the ITPL-> Hope Farm-> Chikka Tirupati route. As it rained on the previous day, the road after Hope farm was not good and there were pot holes. When we crossed hope farm it was already 8.00 Am and rats just started to run in our bellies..After few minutes we started looking for some Sagar/Darshini/Upahar for breakfast. Unfortunately on this route there are no decent restaurants. Finally we stopped at a bakery in Doddadunnasandra hoping to have some light snacks till we get a tiffin point. For our surprise this bakery was equal to (or better than) some of the good bakeries in Bangalore. We tried plain cake, kara bun, potato chips and tea. Tea was awesome!!



Pic. Kaveri Bakery, Doddadunnasandra.
Then around 9 am we left from there and reached Chikka Tirupati temple at 9.30 am. There was no special car parking and as it was not any special puja day there was not much rush also. There were few shops providing the puja items. The Gopuram looks very nice and the temple structure is constructed as similar to Tirumala tirupati temple. Now one can directly enter the temple where Venkateshwara idol is present. As we went early the dressing was not complete and some abhisekams were going on. We had a good darshan and came out. We took one pradakshana around the temple, bought laddus and came out of the temple.


The next destination we decided was Kolar. Our driver decided to take us to Hoskote then from there to Kolar. The road till Hoskote was so bad that, our back was almost on the verge to break by the time we reached Hoskote. But after that it was Chennai high way and road was excellent. We reached Kolar within 30 minutes and then we moved towards the Antara Ganage temple. My friends and me used to visit this temple regularly during my Diploma days. Speciality of this temple is it is situated on a small hill with nice natural sorrounding and small deer park. It also had a view point on the way to the temple. But when we saw this temple many of the things are changed and ruined. The deer park is not visible anymore, the view point is in worst condition, number of monkeys have increased by many folds, the temple is getting renovated so it is in very bad shape and most important there was no power inside the temple. Monkeys have created terror here, people try to go to the temple in groups.
But the temple sourrouding was green and beautiful. The stream coming from the hill top was looking good. There is a tank with Ganesh temple at the center of it. Water falls from the strem through the Bull's mouth into the tank. People take this water in cans and consider it as sacred water. You will find huge rocks and nilgiri trees whichever side you look at.
Pic. Entrance Antar Gange Temple

Pic. Main Shiva Temple

Pic. Ganesh Temple in the tank
Overall we enjoyed the visit to Antar Gange, Kolar. It was already 12:30 pm by now. Now we proceeded towards the next visit to Kotilingeshwar through Bangarpet, KGF. From BEML township the directions were clear. We reached Kotilingeshwar temply by 1.10 pm. This place was also not so crowded. As the name explains for itself there are supposed to be 1 crore shiva lingas. As per the statistics we came to know that there are some 84 lac lingas are already installed. The shiva lings of all sizes are placed in a serial fashion on small galleries. There are too many lings everywhere.

The biggest shiva linga is of 108 meters. There is even a big Basava idol also.

We finished our darshan around 2:30 pm. Now we proceeded for our last planned destination Bangaru Tirupati. It was 8 kms from this place. This place was also calm and serene. Here there is a Vishnu temple and a Padmavati temple. Both the temples are situated on small hills, you have to climb around 50+ steps for darshan! But the idols very beautiful. The speaciality of Vishnu temple is that the darshan to the idol is through the window not a direct one through door. Pujari was explaining the reason to someone old person who was curious about this type of darshan but I could not understand the proper reason. From the top of the temple the sorrunding looked beautiful. After Vishnu darshan we took the steps for Padmavati devi darshan. This idol was shining with lot of ornaments as it was Lakshmi puja day.

This was our last spot and by this time we were hungry and tired. We were desperately inquiring for a good restaurant. Finally we got info that there is a good restaurant near Bangarpet. This was S N Restaurant. We reached at this restaurant around 4 pm!
This is a typical Andhra style restaurant and tariff in the menu would not burn your pocket. Food was ok. The bar arrangement here is a huts type with different capacities, which looks cool.

After finishing our late lunch we took kolar highway to return to bangalore. By 7 pm we were at home sipping fresh tea.

There are more ancient temples in the nearby places of Kolar, most famous ones were Avani and Someshwara temple which we missed. May be some other day. This trip was definitely memorable.