My Trip to Belur, Halebeedu and Shravanabelagola

There I go again. Life is getting rosier. Home minister out of town and we boys decided to take advantage of this. We decided to go to Shravanabelagola, Halebeedu & Belur. Now what triggered off this trip is a clipping in the local news paper (Bangalore Mirror). There was this writing about a church submerged in the Gorur dam water catchment area.

My weekend getaway was quite a different experience. A visit to a coffee plantation( No-Not Coorg) was not just about long walks in the estate, or watching picking and pulping of coffee seeds or even getting lost in the many species of birds that were fluttering high. It promised to be a discovery of sorts. Blended with History and Spirituality, this trip was really refreshing to both my body and soul.

We started around 9 am on 11th October (Saturday) and drove down in my car. We first reached Shravanabelagola exactly at 12 in the noon. Let me confess here, I have been to this place when I was very young and did not remember how it looked. We were four of us (Steven, Stephen, Komesh & myself) and all of us assumed that the Gomateshwara statue would be easy to see. When we reached there, we were shocked to see that it would be easily 640-650 steps to climb and we almost decided not to climb(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomateshwara). However, after a little bit of persuasion from my side, everybody started the climb.

We started around 1 pm and reached around 1.30 pm (Surprisingly faster than expected) and the effort was amazing. The colossal Statue of Gometheswar (58 feet8inches in height built 987 - 993) mesmerized everyone of us and especially the kind of sculptures we had more than 1000 years back was mind boggling. It made me feel all the more proud to be an Indian.

After taking enough photos to relive our moments, we started back down with a heavy heart and reached around 2 pm back down. There was hot food (Pulav) being served as an offering with Curd rice. Mmmm it tasted really good and we had a good helping of it.

After that we started to the church (Hassan-Gorur road). We were cruising down from Shravanabelagola towards Hassan on the bypass road and the milestone read 2 kms to Hassan- a town steeped in history (found in 11th century ) and the headquarters of the Malnad region in Karnataka.

There was not a soul in sight and there were no roads leading to the church. We took a small detour from the road and parked the car and started walking , across what looked like a dry field filled with thorny bushes and a few trees.

It was the backwaters of the Hemavathy Reservoir and the monument was the Holy Rosary Church built by French Missionaries around 1860. We met a few villagers on our return who told us that this village was once a lush hamlet where the River Hemavathy flowed watering fields of sunflower.



An idyllic village lost to development when the reservoir was built at Gorur to develop agriculture around the neighboring towns. No one there knew the name of the church and I tried googling it to find out. A couple of newspaper articles from The Hindu gave me the name and the rest tallied with what the villagers had told us.


The church was reportedly built with mortar and bricks and a mixture of jaggery and eggs.During monsoons, the water level rises submerging the entire church apparently, when only the spire is seen at times. The entire roof had caved in while part of the altar and the central nave still stand but there were no stained glass windows or pews or even windows left in the church.

We soaked ourself with the history and religion attached to this place. It was the one of the rare monuments which has proof that the French had reached parts of Karnataka.

After some time, we decided to move to our next destination - Halebeedu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halebidu). This temple is around 40 kms from Hassan. We reached this place around 6 pm and it was another one of those shocking revelation (at least to me) about the sculptures over there.

I was not so very fond of architectural heritage of India. That is until I got a good view of the temple at Halebeed, understood the complexity involved and visualized the minutest details to which the rocks were carved.



The temple also hosts two of the largest Nandi statues in India. The guide told us they are the 7th and 8th largest Nandi statues in the country. The carvings seen around the temple are amazing. Every inch of the wall is filled with art and the attention to details in each carving are surprising.



There are many mythological stories being depicted on the externals of the walls. Each layer has Elephants, lions and many more animals in 1000 numbers. There is not one elephant similar to the other and everyone was sculpted in different positions.

We could not relish more moments over there as the temple closes down by 6.30 pm. So make sure you are there early to enjoy every moment.

After a bit of shopping (stone sculptures of Gods, animals & lamps), we moved towards Belur (after assurance from Halebeed that the temple closes at 8.30 pm). We reached Belur (17 kms from Halebeed) by around 7.30 pm and were disappointed.

The new closing time for the Belur temple was at 7 pm and we could not see the temple. Well it could be a blessing in disguise because I personally plan to do the whole trip just to watch Belur temple again. LOL

We started back to Bangalore around 8 pm in the evening and reached back at 1.30 in the night. Physically drained out but mentally charged up to take the new challenges posed by life.

Information on Belur and Halebeedu

The two places are around 20kms apart. If you are driving, drive from Bangalore to Hassan. Take NH4 out of Bangalore. After driving for around an hour, turn left to NH 48(Bangalore to Mangalore road) at Nelamangala. Continue driving on the highway till you reach Hassan town(around 180kms from Bangalore) which is a few kilometers to the right of the highway. Ask for directions to Halebeedu once you are in town. Halebeedu is around 40kms from Hassan town. The drive from Bangalore takes around 6 hours.

Love one and all

Bala