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Spiritual Getaway - Sri Satya Shaneshwara Temple, Bidanagere

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As mentioned in my earlier blog ( link ), after offering our prayers to Lord Chennakeshava we next started towards Bidanagere to visit Sri Satya Shaneshwara temple. For this you will need to drive further on Tumakuru-Kunigal road for another 50 minutes to reach Bidanagere. Looks like this has been built recently. So, once you reach Bidanagere you will find huge signboards with directions leading to this temple and the world’s largest Panchamukhi Anjaneya statue welcomes you to this place from far off distance. We reached parking lot and there is ample space to park your car with no fee. We got down and took some time to get a good picture of the huge 161 feet tall standing Hanuman statue which was indeed a tough task.   Since it was evening time, temple attendants were asking us to visit the main temple first since it was evening aarti (Pooja) time. So, we headed to the main Shaneshwara temple to offer our prayers to Lord Shani. Shani is a Hindu God associated with planet Saturn.

Spiritual Getaway - Kaidala Sri Chennakeshava temple

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Kaidala Sri Chennakeshava temple is in Tumakuru City of Karnataka state and around 68 Kilometers (1.25 hours’ drive) from Bangalore. How to reach - We started from home (Bangalore) post lunch at around 2:30 PM. We drove on NICE road (to avoid city traffic) and took Tumakuru Road exit. After driving along Tumakuru Road for around 30 minutes we took right and drove on Tumakuru – Kunigal road for another 4 Kilometers until we reached Gulur Circle. We took left from Gulur circle and drove for another 1.5 kilometers. This drive is enthralling with some amazing views of the lush green vegetation on the right and lake on the left. Upon reaching Kaidala, we took right onto Kaidala road, and after driving around half a kilometer you will find a signboard leading to the temple parking lot.   We parked our vehicle here. There is ample parking space here and its free of cost. The temple is built in typical Dravidian style with the walls enclosing the temple complex like a fort. We thought of

Bastar - Part 10 - Chitrakoot Falls : Niagara of India

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As mentioned in my previous blog, we started off early in the morning to Chitrakoot falls from Mendri Ghumar.   We reached the parking of Chitrakoot falls in around half an hour time. From the parking lot, we started walking towards the falls. Since it was early morning, we could see fog around this area. As we continued to walk and the fog started clearing slowly, at one point we could see the top view of the falls and it was sheer beauty. Chitrakoot falls is located on the Indrāvati river. The 30 feet high falls is called “Niagara of India” because of its horseshoe shape. After walking few more steps ahead, we reached the main camping place. Here we could see lot of tents by “Unexplored Bastar” and we could imagine the crowd that we would be anticipating here today. But luckily, they were just waking up. We then got down to the base of the falls through the clearly crafted steps by the tourism department to visit the cave beneath the waterfall where you will find lot of dei