Blogs from Hassan, Karnataka, India, Asia

Day 8: Bangalore - Hassan 25 September 2017 After breakfast, we drove to Hassan (180 kms/ 4.5 hrs approx), leaving wet Bangalore behind. En route we visited Shravenabelagola. Shravenabelagola, renowned for its colossal Gomateshwara statue. There are around 700 steps to climb on to reach the Gomateshwara statue. Shravenabelagola is one of the most celebrated Jain pilgrim sites and the gigantic statue of Lord Gomateshwara has been carved out of a single block of granite and stands majestically atop a hill. The 21 m high monolithic stone statue of the Lord Gommateshwara, also referred to as Bahubali is located above this hill which is called Vindhyagiri or Doddabetta or Indragiri hill. It is estimated to weigh approximately 80 tons. The carved nude statue is shown standing on a lotus and captures the tranquillity typical of much ... read more

After our "shithole experience" in Halebid (read in our last blog entry), we did not feel like staying overnight in another pilgrimage town. Furthermore, the sleeping options in Shravanabelagola sounded, well let's say, limited. Most of the guesthouses are for pilgrims and are rented by the local jain organisation for as little as 210 rupees for a double. So we made the trip to Shravanabelagola from Hassan in 1 day - and it was a perfect decision. But as this place was an extraordinary place for us, we feel like giving it some space in an extra blog. Why did we chose to go to Shravanabelagola? On this trip we wanted to visit some smaller, remoter places around Mysore as this area is considered to be kind of a holy area with lot of sacred places ... read more

OK, the headline is quite provocative. We do have some indian friends who are spiritual. So please, we do not want to offend anyone. We are just talking about the mass of people and what we observed on our travels. But later some thought on this. From Madikeri we took one of the many buses down to Hassan. If you want to travel this route: just be warned! The road is really bad and during these 4 hours we were shaken quite a bit. But again we had been lucky, having seats in the front of the bus with great views. We arrived at the bus station in Hassan and were really surprised how clean and well organized this bus station is. As it was early afternoon, we quickly decided to make our way to Halebid. ... read more

After a very hectic schedule, I welcomed the opportunity to stay in the middle of a coffee plantation, sit out on the veranda basking in the sun, and wake to the sound of birds singing each morning. Our journeys to, from, and surrounding the areas of Hassan and Belur may have been quite long but it was so good to see some countryside again. The highlight for me had to be the visit to Shravanabelagola where we climbed barefoot up the vindhyagiri hill to a Jain temple. As well as enjoying getting my first bout of exercise on this trip, I took in fantastic views of the city and the gommateshvara statue. We visited two other temples during our time in the Hassan district – the Hindu Hoysaleswara temple at Halebeedu and the Chennakeshava temple complex ... read more

Aha...I'm a bit delayed in writing these next couple of posts. As the program progresses I'm getting less and less motivation, as it often goes with experiencing new things. At first it's really exciting and everything you do is new! and wonderful! and you want to use exclamation points to end all your sentences! But eventually you start to get used to things and don't try to learn as much. I think part of it, too, is that I haven't been able to get much exercise here so I'm losing my eternal endorphine high. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Anyway, back to actually reporting on the fun stuff. On Sunday we got the day off from hours and hours of lectures and got to go visit some sweet temples in Belur and Halebidu, Karnataka. Just as in our trip to ... read more