East Coast Diaries: Travelling Back to Thiruvannamalai

Day: November 13 2008, Time 730 am.
I was picked up from Bangalore because I had been working late the previous day, my parents with a driver drove all the way from Mysore to pick me up here. And as it would may be, Bangalore traffic made us to move to our destination much slower than intended. Our initial plans was to visit the Golden Temple at Sripuram near Vellore and the Vellore Fort and wind up our journey at Thiruvannamalai.
By the time we had crossed into Tamil Nadu it was already 1030 am, now it was around a 3 hr drive from Hosur to Vellore, but the fantastic roads made us to forget the distance. We were travelling through NH7 from Hosur to Krishnagiri, here we have to take a deviation towards left to Vellore.
Vellore is about a 3 hours drive from Krishnagiri. Once we reached Vellore, we made our way to the Sripuram Golden Temple. The main goddess over here is the Lakshmi. Once we had taken the special tickets for the Darshan, we were asked to proceed along a star-shaped pathway leading to the temple, everyone visiting the golden temple have to proceed in a star shaped pathway before reaching the main sanctum. The main sanctum is almost covered in gold, which reflect back with the crystal clear waters surrounding the temple. In the waters you can find devotees who have strewn with bangles and money. Photography is not allowed inside the premises of the Golden temple and all your camera equipment is confiscated before we enter the shrine itself.
After finishing our darshan here, we had lunch in Vellore town and then we proceeded towards Vellore Fort. Vellore Fort forms the center of attraction of the main Vellore Town. The Fort is covered on 3 sides with water. This fort was the bastion of the Vijayanagara Kings and eventually fell to the Adil shahis of Bijapur.

Intricately Carved Sculptures Inside Jalakanteshwara Temple

Inside Jalakanteshwara Temple

Jalakanteshwara Temple

Inside Vellore Fort is a beautiful temple dedicated to Lord Shiva, Jalakanteshwara Temple, its intricate architecture similar to the temples as in Madurai. Legend has it the Vijayanagara kings fearing the Adil Shahis victory hid the main idol of the deity, but he hid too well and it has not been recovered till now. Its a nice place to move around for an hour or two and understand the significance of this place.

Vellore Fort

At around 5pm we started from Vellore towards Thiruvannamalai, a good 76 kms away from Vellore. We reached Thiruvannamalai around 630 pm, booked our rooms and went to have darshan, thus ending our first day of our journey.

East Coast Diaries: A prologue

2 weeks before the actual date of travel,
My father and me were putting down together a list of places we would be likely visiting in a few weeks time. We hadn't yet finalized the dates for our travel but looking at the number of places getting added up, we were sure it was going to be a long tour. This leg we had planned along the East coast and along the fertile banks of the Cauvery Delta.

A week before the actual date of travel,
The plans were going topsy-turvy, my manager had not yet granted me the leaves for the whole one week I required. Dad was having his own set of problems back at office. The long tour was about to be getting shelved, but as you know luck favors the brave, i somehow convinced my manager that it was very important for me to take the leaves. Dad had sorted out his problems back at office at it was full speed ahead to our long tour.

Read on more for this fantastic piece of journey

Around Gopalaswamy Hills

Time 5 am
I woke to a brand new day as I had grown older by a year now. Monday mornings are usually crammed up, bustling traffic, even Mysore is not spared on those frantic Mondays. But, I chose to stay back at home on this special day and plan to visit Himavad Gopalaswamy Betta situated somewhere in bandipur national park.

We started around 6am, the sun was steady high and i guessed it would be a very bright sunny day which i thought would take away the essential purpose of visiting the hills. Himavad Gopalaswamy Betta as the name specifies is covered with veiled mist all round the year. That's the specialty of this place. As we slowly started our ascent towards the hills situated at an altitude of 1300m above sea level, the conditions around started changing dramatically. What was supposed to be a bright sunny morning was slowly changing, the clouds were almost covering the peak of the hills almost making it invisible to the bare eyes.

Thick veiled mist covering the peak of the hills

We reached the base of the temple at around 830 and we were almost shivering as the clouds grazing by us gave that punch of coldness.It was as if the clouds were singing in praise of the lord. The sight which behold in front of us was almost like a picture used on my desktop wallpaper.

The whole place around Gopalaswamy betta is frequented by wild elephants

Nobody was present around the temple. It was just my parents and me and the whole place to ourselves. The temple priest arrives only by around 930 because the only bus to this place arrives by that time. we had the whole one hour to ourselves with nobody disturbing us. And luck what may, soon after walking a few distance away from the temple, we spotted a herd of wild elephants grazing in the plains below:). That was awesome. Watching these beasts in their wild habitat, it was just amazing. The whole place around Gopalaswamy betta is frequented by wild elephants because it falls in the core zone of the Bandipur National Park. We came back to the temple after watching the elephants and the temple priest had arrived by that time. He conducted pooja for us, and explained to us the importance of this place. This temple was built by the erstwhile cholas way back in the 12 century.

The temple was built by the Cholas in the 12 Century

We sat there for a while, took a deep fresh breath as the air had the purity of the surroundings. we started back around 11 to Mysore with our minds still in the backdrop of misty hills of Gopalaswamy.

Around Gopalaswamy Hills