A Religious Retreat

The long weekend combining Diwali was quite a memorable one. My parents and my brother visited Bangalore the next day after Diwali. We went on a two day trip to nearby places like Talai Cauvery (Coorg district), Mysore, Melukote and Srirangapattinam. All these places are religious places famous in unique ways. Talai Cauvery-the origin of river Cauvery is considered a religious spot and claimed to be the "Southern Ganges". We hired the Indian oldie Ambassador and started on Saturday morning 6.30 am. We had breakfast at Maddur Tiffany's (which is very famous for its Vadas) at 8.30 am. From then on, it was a non-stop ride to Talai Cauvery which was around 200 kms. The roads were quite bad in lot of places but the skillful driver Jose meandered his way through the hills and valleys and finally reached the spot. A perfect blend of religious santity and nature's display of flora and fauna is a sight that is quite easy to recall but hard to describe. After offering prayers, we headed back to Coorg with an additional 5 liters of the so called pure water of Cauvery. Let us not get into the subject of the purity of the water-of course I still don't question its santity. Our initial plan was to stay in Coorg, but the place kinda looked weird and so we changed our mind and headed straight to Mysore. We halted in Mysore for the night quite tired after the day's drive.

The Diwan's residency (where we stayed) was just a refugee camp for the night. We wiggled out of the place by 7 am on Sunday morning and headed straight to Srirangapattinam to see Lord Ranganatha in his famous "Ananthasayanam". I need to mention that the temples here in the South carry some mystical tranquility that all the turmoil in your mind vanishes the moment you step into them (maybe some day I will mention this as a separate topic!). After offering our prayers, we headed towards Melukote. On the way, we say Tipu Sultan's dilapidated fort, and the place near the temple where his body was supposed to be found. History and legend has it that, Tipu was somehow trying to escape by entering the temple so that he can be spared his life. But he was killed just a few hundred yards from the temple walls.

Melukote was a 2 hour ride from Srirangapattinam. The roads were making the drive quite painful but that was a Hobson's choice and we just had to drive through. In Melukote, we visited the Chaluvanarayanaswamy temple which is in the foot hills. After this, we started our ascend to the Narasimhar's temple on top of the rocky hill. After offering our prayers here, we came down and saw the temple tank (usually called Pushkarani).

Having completed our agenda, we started our Bangalore journey from there around 12.30 pm. On the way, we stopped at the Kamat hotel for lunch and finally hit home at 4.30 pm. The journey was quite enjoyable and after a long time the four of us were doing such a trip. Thanks to the weather, the two days were very pleasant that kept us fresh and going.

My parents and brother stayed in Bangalore for the next two days where we went around Bangalore and did decent shopping, my brother got us all new clothes for Diwali. Their four day stay in Bangalore and my break from work was rejuvenating and the trip just made it even more refreshing.