Jog falls, Ikkeri and Murudeshwar

A neat little combination for a weekend away from Bangalore.

We started from bangalore Friday evening towards Shimoga on the inter city express train (leaving Bangalore city railway station at 4:30 PM). This turned out to be a quick and comfortable way to reach Shimoga from Bangalore. The train reached Shimoga by 9:30 giving us enough time to grab dinner and find a place to stay.

The next day, we hired a cab to take us to Jog falls. Jog falls is about 100 KM from Shimoga and take a bit more than 2 hours if you head there directly. We stopped on the way to visit a temple at Ikkeri, a 3KM deviation from Sagara town. This 15th century temple is definitely worth a visit.

The temple was supposedly built during the reign of the Vijayanagara chiefs and follows the Nayaka style of Architecture.

We spent an hour at the temple and moved on towards Jog falls.


The first sight of the water fall was breath taking. There is a stairway to take you to the base of the waterfall. We took the stairs and reached the base of the waterfall. Watching the falls from the base is even more stunning. It rained on and off during our climb down and we could see a rainbow in the water fall.

We spent some time playing in the water at the base of the waterfall and started back. The climb back was daunting but we managed it with a couple of breaks.


From there on, we headed to Murudeshwar, which is about 100 KM from Jog. The roads are bad, especially the ghat section and it turned out to be a two and half hour drive.

By the sea at RNS residency
At Murudeshwar, we stayed at RNS Residency. This is probably the best place to stay in Murudeshwar located close to the temple and beach and with beach facing rooms.

Observatory atop the gopuram
Both the main temple and the Shiva cave temple are beautiful. The temple gopuram also doubles up as a 16 floor observatory to get a birds eye view of Murudeshwar. The views from the top are amazing.




We headed back to Bangalore by the KSRTC Volvo bus that leaves Murudeshwar bus stand around 8:40 PM. I think the KSRTC buses come into Murudeshwar only if there are passengers boarding there. If you haven't booked a bus in advance, it would be better to take an auto to the highway and look for buses there.

Turuvekere - 16 Aug 2009

Turuvekere is one of the not so popular centers of Hoysala architechture in Karnataka. A visit to this place gives you an opportunity to see the obvious similarities and subtle architectural differences in comparison with the more popular destinations like Belur, Halebid and Somnathpur.

I heard about this place from my friend Chetan. It immediately fired my curiosity and we planned a weekend visit. Turuvekere is about 135 Kms from Bangalore. You can either travel through Bangalore - Tumkur - Turuvekere route or Bangalore - Kunigal - Yediyur - Mayasandra - Turuvekere route. We decided to take the second route through Magadi road and reached Turuvekere in about 3 hours.

Turuvekere has 3 main Hoysala styled temples

1. Gangadhareshwara Temple
the name suggests, this is a Shiva temple and has a huge bull statue.



Apart from this, a stone bell caught our attention. Unfortunately, we did not have the services of a guide to tell us more about these temples.


2. Channakeshava Temple



3. Sri.Moole Shankara temple



Turuvekere is a temple town and apart from the above temples, it has a number of contemporary temples including Sri Lakshmi Beteraya temple.

We heard from the people in Turuvekere about the Channakeshava temple in the neighboring town of Araluguppe and decided to go there. This place looked better maintained by the tourism department than the Turuvekere temples. The temple exteriors were glaringly similar to the temple in Somnathpur.


We saw some very intricately made roof carvings here.


All in all, it was a day well spent.