Thursday morning I took A on a very small drive near our house! I am yet to learn a lot, but I finally decided to start driving!! Ideal thing would have been to learn driving completely and give the perfect gift to A. But I have made peace with myself and settled to learning slowly.
We went to big Ganesha temple, had breakfast at Brahmins cafe bar and were back home. I made vegetable pulav, raitha and shavige kheer for lunch. Everything tasted very good (is what everyone said :)). I baked Banana walnut muffin which turned out so well :) Thanks to J for the recipe. I want to cook and bake more. For dinner, we ordered chinese from Tangra, food was very good. We had got pineapple cake from Au Bon Pain.
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| Avenue Road |
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| Vegetable Pulav and Raita |
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| Shavige payasa |
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| Banana Walnut Muffin |
We started early morning at 5.45 from our house to Belur Halebid. The drive was beautiful with great roads. Though we took few wrong roads, we were in Halebid at around 11.30am. We hired a guide and spent more than one hour exploring the carvings and learning the history from the guide. Its one of the most beautiful temples I have seen. Its just amazing to stand on the temple stone knowing that many many years back, kings/queens/dancers have touched this place.
Halebidu is famous for the carvings on the outside walls, whereas Belur is famous for the inside walls, inside the temple. In Halebid, the walls start off with 4 rows - 1st row has elephants for strength, 2nd has lions for courage, 3rd and 5th have flowers for beauty and 4 th row has horse for speed - Characteristics needed for a king to be successful :). There are stories from Mahabharatha and Ramayana throughout the wall. Both Belur and Halebid are star-shaped temples. Halebid has 2 Ishwara idols inside - one for king and one for the queen. Belur has Vishnu temple. Both the temples have many pillars and a central round stone that was used as stage for dancers. Each pillar inside the Belur temple is beautifully carved and has unique design on each. One can call the temple a international jewelry box as the design of the carvings are so intricate and perfect that it seems like the modern jewellers have copied the design for their jewelry from here. Few things that I can re-collect about the carvings on the walls - Peacock feather, Lion legs, crocodile face, monkey brain depicts a mythological animal; women in all the moods, 600 hair styles in a woman; hollow skull as form of head gear; Vamana avatar; lot of Krishna stories; Food chain - Snake, Pig, Lion, imaginary bird.
The weather was pleasant and very less crowd. The road from Halebid to Belur was very scenic with mary gold flowers all along the road. We took a guide at both the temples, and were glad as they explained everything very well. We had oota at kstdc restaurant in belur and headed towards Chickmangalur. Our friend's place is about 20km after Chickmangalur, in the middle of coffee plantation. The house is like a resort, and very beautiful. It was good not to worry about my cell phone ringing or about the time. It was raining here and we had a relaxed time, thanks to SS. The only thing we did was eat and eat. S is a great cook and makes great desserts :) We did a small walk near the house, went to kavikall mata - which is at the top of a mountain and has an amazing view of the Bhadra forest reserve. Muthodi is one part of Bhadra which is around 20 km form Mallandhur. I could stand there forever and watch the mist cover the mountains completely for a minute and then clear out the next minute.
Our friends run a homestay called woodway - their house thats been converted to a nice homestay. S has done a great job of decorating the place and making it a cosy haven for the tourists.
The drive back was equally good - reaching our house in just 4 hours. A nice getaway :)
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