Weekender Guru: 2011

I was busy for a while to write my travelogue on Dharmastala & Kukke. Inspired by our Current CM and Ex-CM's news about taking Oath in Dharmastala, I decided to write this blog before my memory becomes old.
Unlike my other trips, this one was little different for the fact that we had a newly wed couple with us - Srikanth & Swapna.
Here is how we planned. Last minute plan with the confusion whether to take Shiradi Ghat or Charmadi Ghat, we ended up going through Shiradi Ghat. It was a good decision in the end.
This trip was one of my best planned trip.

Our date of journey : 17th Feb 2011 till 19th Feb 2011

Route : Bangalore - Nelamangala (Take left towards Mangalore road after reaching nelamangala & look for a deviation board and make sure to exit from fly over) - Kunigal - Hassan - Sakaleshpur - Continue towards Mangalore and on the right side you see a deviation towards dharmastala (which is 20KMS). Take that road. The total distance will be around 305KMS.

We started around 6 PM on Friday from office (Domlur) and reached Nelamangala road by 7 PM. As usual, we were greeted with terrible traffic but once you hop onto the nelamangala fly over, it is an amazing experience.
Make sure you take a deviation to the left (there is a sign board about Mangalore road) else you will end up hitting another toll gate which leads to Tumkur.
We hit Mangalore road and headed towards kunigal by 6:50 PM. The roads are quite decently but still under repair / construction. So, while driving in the evening make sure you don't drive too fast as there are always surprises waiting for you.

Left to Right - Me, Srikanth, Swapna (Behind) & Akshatha

This picture can give you an approximate idea of the road condition

Wide roads

Below is my suggested plan

Start atleast by 6:00AM, Reach Hassan by 9:00AM, Have breakfast at Kamath yatrinivas (just before hassan). Drive till Dharmastala. You may reach by 1:00 PM. Go to "Rajathadri" and take room. Dump your luggage. Go to temple and see if you can do darshan, if not, have lunch (Temple will be closed by 2:00PM and i am not sure if you can make it). So, have lunch and take rest or Visit car museum and bahubali temple which are closeby. It is worth visiting. Get ready by 3PM and visit the temple. You will be back by an hour. Start from Dharmastala (Checkout from hotel if you are planning to stay in kukke) and reach Kukke. Mind you it will be very hot and humid at both places. I'd suggest you to carry umbrella.

Driving directions to Kukke :

Return to bangalore - Mangalore road highway (NH48) and head towards bangalore. On the way to bangalore (around 10 kms) towards right side, you will see a board towards Kukke. That place is called Gundya and is easy to locate. Take a right turn and continue. You will reach kukke in half hour (around 20KMS). Go to temple for darshan as it will be closed by 8 PM.

Have dinner at temple. Now you have 2 choices - 1. Return to dhamastala or 2. Stay in Kukke and return to blore.

Choice is yours. The only problem in kukke is Stay. No good hotels are available for stay and most of them are booked. If you are planning to stay in kukke, You can visit the restaurant (Neo Mysore cafe) and enquire about the stay. They have a good lodge which is little far from temple (around 1 km). They charge around 500 for standard rooms and 1000 for AC rooms. It is worth the money for that hotel. You can have breakfast at Neo cafe. It is a very good place. Visit the temple if you like (evening you cannot visit adisesha temple as it will be closed by 7PM, so you can see that next morning)Next day after darshan you can head back to blore.

This is what we did

We decided to start early from bangalore on friday, reach Dharmastala by mid night, take rest. Next day visit temple for darshan then have lunch at Temple, check out from room and head towards Kukke.

Visit temple at kukke (both Adisesha and subramanya temple), stay if you can get accomodation. Next day morning visit the temple, have lunch and head towards bangalore.

Below are the pics of our journey

Day 1 : Friday night - Dinner at Kamat Yatrinivas

Caution: If you not comfortable or used to driving in the night or with just one family, please don't take this route. The lorry guys are just maniacs and you just can't imagine how rash they would be driving on shiradi ghat road.

Tea Break before entering shiradi Ghat

Day 1 : Reached Dharmastala by 12:00 AM. Took room at "Rajathadhri" near New Bus stand in Dharmastala. Luckily there wasn't much crowd as it was exam time :) & right time to visit

Day 2 : Temple visit by 8 AM

Below is the place where we took our room (Rajathadhri).

Note : Rooms are very neat yet very cheap (Rs 200/ room) Only 24 hours stay is allowed.

Rajathadhri lobby

Just to give you an idea about the room

Temple Entrance

Note : Buy the "sankalpa" ticket which is around Rs 180. This will help you to stand in front of lord manjunatha for sometime unlike normal queue

For camera - Swapna & srikanth

Few more :) me & my wife

After temple visit, we had lunch at temple and then went back to the room. Took rest for an hour and headed towards Kukke.

Note : We found it very tough to get good rooms in Kukke. The place is now controlled by government which is sad part (unlike Dharmastala which is under control of Dharmadhikari Sri Veerendra Hegde).

Day 2 : Left to kukke by 4 PM

Enroute to Kukke

Nice landscape around kukke

Some peak not sure which one

Kukke subramanya temple : Lucky enough to capture this nice view of temple with Moon.

Utsava murthi...

For pilgrims reference - Looked like handy information

This is the place where we stayed. Most of the rooms were booked and we were able to find this one. By the way, the weather was very humid.

The deluxe room that we took

Neo Mysore cafe - One of the neat hotels in Kukke

Another hotel opp to Neo but we didn't try here.

Day 3 :

Early morning walk in Kukke. Our plan was to visit the "kumara dhara river". There is a dam being built around that place and since it was summer there wasn't anything for us