Birthday celebrations of my son Shreyas

This 24th October my son completed his one year on this earth. So there was a small celebration on this occasion. Here are the snaps...

Trip to Chikmagalur - Part II (Belur)

From Halebid we moved to Belur which is 16kms from Halebidu. Belur is famous for Chennakesava temple, again built by Hoysala king Vishnuvardhan somewhere around 900 years ago. 

We hired a guide to know about temple who gave us good information about the temple and its history. In kannada "chenna" means "Beautiful/Handsome" and hence this is a Handsome Vishnu temple! This is a symmetrical structured temple which has minute handwork of different statues of deities, dancing maidens, maidens in different moods, animals etc.   

Guides typically have a small mirror in hand with which they reflect on the statue to focus for explanation. There are 42 statues of maidens, which are called "shilabalikas". Out of 42 statues 32 are outside the temple and 4 of them are inside the temple. The one's I remember are Darpana Sundari, Bhasma Mohini, lady with parrot, Lady with Monkey, lady hunting a bird and lady removing a thorn from her feet. Each of these statues is very intricately carved giving details of their pose. Bhasma mohini is Vishnu avatar to kill the Bhasmashura in disguise. ( http://flickr.com/photos/adarsh/316344081 )

There is a broken statue of Arjuna aiming at the eye of fish in Draupadi swayamvar. The statue contains the arrow hitting the fish but there is no bow in the hands of Arjuna as it is destroyed.

There are statues of Vishnu in different avatars. In the Narasimha avatar statue, there is a chain carved around the lord’s neck, which looks like a original chain. There is a special statue of Ganesha, people call it "Result Ganesha" as students come here and do pooja for a good result. Inside the temple the Vishnu statue is large and beutiful as its name. There is a mandap in front of garvagriha that has four pillars and the on top the four shilabalikas. One of the pillars was supposed to rotate with the bearings, which is called Narasimha pillar. But now the pillar does not rotate as the temple roof came down. There supposed to be another gopuram on the temple but it got destroyed.

This pillar has many statues carved on it and there is a blank space. There are many reasons explained by our guide are like, may be this is left blank to challenge anyone to create a new statue of this quality, or to explain other form of god that is blank/vacant or "shunya" in sanskrit or another reason explained was, if the creator missed some avatar of god then there is a place left for others to carve the same on it.

There is another statue on a pillar is a beautiful dancing lady. Our guide neatly explained this with speacial interest. According to ancient hindu scriptures there are four types of women, they are Sankhini, padmini, hastini and nagini. Padmini types of women are most beautiful and they have typical characteristics to attract men. The statue which was carved there was a typical padmini type of woman. (This is what told by our guide;)).

The entire temple is inside a big boundary, which has a kalyan mandap also. 

There is a big pillar outside the temple, which is just kept on a platform with out any joints or support. 

Information: 

Distance: From Bangalore 222

Stay: Hassan is the nearest best place. Chikmagalur is also an option.

Guide: For Rs.150 one can hire a guide. I recommend hiring a guide to know interesting details about the temple!

Spend good time at the temple and enjoy the delicate work of Hoysala kings.

More info about the temple

1. On statues:

http://www.ourkarnataka.com/states/hassan/belur.htm

2.  There are beautiful picture on this site:

http://www.pbase.com/yardbird/india_karnataka_belurhalebidu

3. More on Soapstone

http://www.hoysala.in/soapstone-sculptures-of-hoysala-temples.shtml

4. More details on Narasimha pillar

http://www.hoysala.in/narasimha-pillar-belur-temple.shtml

Trip to Chikmagalur - Part I (Halebid)

October 1st we four families started for a short trip to Chikmagalur with a plan to visit Belur, Halebid and the places around Chikmagalur. We started from Bangalore in the evening and reached Hassan by midnight and stayed at a hotel. The next day we started off to Halebid.

Halebid was the capital of Hoysala kingdom. Hoysala kingdom was famous for its fine temple architecture. During the rule of king Vishnuvardhana Hoysala they built many temples which demonstrate the skilled craftsmanship of their architects. One of the examples of it is Hoysaleswara temple at Halebid. 

Hoysala the name has two parts “Hoy” and “Sala”. In old kannada language “Hoy” means hit/strike. “Sala” is the name of a young man who was instructed by his guru to kill the tiger. Hence the name Hoysala after this brave young man. The picture of Sala killing a tiger became the emblem of the Hoysala dynasty.

Halebid temple consists two temples on a single platform Hoysaleswara and Kedareswara. The former temple was built first in 12th century. It consists of numerous sculptures of Hindu deities, animals and birds. This temple is built with monolithic soapstone, which is naturally soft due to high talc content but gets gradually strong when it comes in touch with wind and heat. When the stone is soft carvings can be done easily so this stone is chosen for fine carvings. 

The temples have two big Nandis in front, one big Ganesha idol, and there is a big lake in front of the temple premise. Because of the Lake the place was called Dwarasamdura. The whole scenery is a treat to watch.

Distance: From Bangalore 220 Kms. From Hassan 33 Kms

Route: Bangalore->Jalahalli Cross-> Nelmangala->Hassan->Halebid

Stay: Hassan is the nearest place to stay overnight. Many budget hotels are available in Hassan.

To Buy: You can buy some hand made stone crafts that are sold near the parking for a good bargain.

Google's Browser is here - CHROME

Google released beta version of their browser named Chrome!

http://www.google.com/chrome

Download, Install and have fun.

For me it is much better than IE. When I compare with mozilla, the UE looks better and clean as there is only one box for both searching and website address entry. The best part is it has its own task manager!!

Rest I have to explore!

Multi touch screens - Developed by Jeff Han

Jeff Han, a research scientist of New York University has developed a new technology in the touch screen world. His technlogy is based on sensing multiple touch points on the screen. He demonstrated his work on multi touch screens in the 2006 TED Conference. The technlogy looks amazing and it can contribute a lot to make advanced user friendly applications. This technology allows user to browse on the screen using both the hands. In this way user can type faster on a virtual key pad!
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html
Later he formed a company named Perceptive Pixel (http://www.perceptivepixel.com/) and continues his research. His work already found way into many applications.
Jeff has created a Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall using the same technology. CNN has alredy used this wall to cover the 2008 US presidential elections.
The second demo of his work is shared on
http://blog.centopeia.com/2007/03/21/jeff-hans-multitouch-demo-ii/
There is also a video on his website and they are available on YouTube also!

Apple has also used similar multitouch technology in their iPhone and notebooks. But the number of touch points handled are very less. Of course the screens on which Jeff has demonstrated his work are much bigger than the handheld devices. I think this technology will find its place slowly into handhelds and other devices. Hats off to Jeff for his imagination and his work.

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.

Visit to Gupteshwar Temple, Orissa

Gupteshwar is a Lord Shiva Shrine which is 70Kms from Jeypore, Orissa. As the name it is a Hidden Shiva ling inside a cave. Temple is situated above approximately 150 steps from the foot hills of the hill. There are many deep and dark caves present in the same hill. The Shiva ling is inside a cave in very dark atmosphere. Just next to the main shrine there is a cave extension which takes you to Kamdhenu. The way is pitch dark, either you have to carry enough torches to help yourself through the dark or take help of some local boy as a guide. One can also go above the hill to have a look of the entire area.

Many people come here for their Manasik(Mannat) and get their head tonsured, which is a hindu belief.

The atmosphere is calm and serene as we visited on a normal day. This place draws a huge crowds during Shivaratri. Gupteshwar is situated near the banks of River Kolab. It flows through huge rocks and the flow is quite good. It looked little dangerous to take a dip, though a fence has been created near the ghat for safety. But the whole sight looked beautiful. I was told that the Chattisgarh border is very near from the other side of the banks. Many pilgrims come from the other side to visit Lord Shiva and they call this place as "Gupta Kedar".

Other places to see:

Apart from the temple there are few more attractions. They are Medicinal garden, Paravadi, Swargadwar and Sangam.
The garden is next to the main road. I could not find many plants in the garden or may be it was my ignorance! Swargadwar was a cave which is very deep situated 1000 meters from the road. You have to climb to get into the cave. A shiva ling is present at the mid way of the cave. Due to lack of lighting instruments we could not explore much of it. Paravadi is another cave around 1500 meters from main road. But we found people staying there and doing some sadhana. The scenery is very beautiful.

How to Reach?

Most recommended way is to take a cab from jeypore which would take around 2 hours. Till Boipariguda the road is decent, after that road is not maintained properly.
Jeypore is in Koraput district in Orissa. Koraput is connected by train from Visakhapatnam and Bhubaneswar.

Where to stay?

There are many hotels in Jeypore. One of the decent hotel is "Hotel Hello Jeypore". There is a Pantha Nivas @ Gupteshwar.

What to Carry?

Water, Basic food, Torch, Umbrella.
There are some small shops where you can get some biscuits and some pakoda stalls were also present. The tribals sell Curd and some paneer based sweets.
Boipariguda is a place where you can get some basic

More Links:
Koraput Official website

Check my Korea Trip Photos on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/biswanath

Intoduction