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Tour in Chitoor District and Sripuram/Vellore

Last December 25th, we planned to visit Kanipakam and Ardhagiri. We decided to go some other pilgrim places too in Chittoor District of Andhra Pradesh and then visit Sripuram golden temple in Tamil Nadu to complete all in a day trip.

We booked a cab and started from Srikalahasti in the morning Via Tirupati, Puttoor. Our plan is to visit Vepanjeri (Near Chitoor) and then to go Kanipakam from there. Vepamjeri is near Gangadhara Nellore and Chitoor which has Asta Lakshmi Temple and Dasavatara temple. Visited Venupopala swami temple in Karvetnagaram, which is on the way to reach Vepamjeri from Puttoor. This is one of the famous temples of historical importance in this district.

Dasavatara temple has idols of Dasavatarams of Lord Vishnu; It also has small temples for many other gods. It has huge 33 feet status of Ranganatha Swami. There is garden with 27 trees representing the 27 stars exercising their sway over the destinies of mankind. And Asta Lakshmi Temple has separate small temples for Asta Lakshmi Matas. Check http://www.vepanjeri.com/ for more details. 

After visiting Vepanjeri we had our breakfast @ Chittoor and went to Kanipakam. As it was weekend and holiday there was huge crowd in the temple, we went for special darshan and completed our puja to Lord Ganesha in an Hour. Then we started our journey to Ardhagiri to visit Ardhagiri Sri Verranjanjaneya Swami Temple.

According to legend about Ardhagiri, during Tretayuga, Hanuman brought Sanjeeva Parvatham in order to save Lakshmana during a war when Lakshmana fell unconscious. During the journey, half of Sanjeeva Parvatham fell, and the place where it landed came is known as Aragonda. Aragonda, initially is called as Arakonda (In Telugu language, "Ara" (sounds A'raw)means 'Half' and "Konda" (sounds Kon'Da) means Hill or Mountain). With the time, the people changed their way of pronouncing this word "Arakonda" as "Aragonda" which is now the name of the village under this hill. This hill is famous with name "Ardhagiri" (Ardha means Half and Ge'ree means mountain). In Ardhagiri, it is believed that Sanjeevaraya Pushkarini (pond containing the holy water) never gets dried nor spoiled, even when kept for long periods of time. When devotees drink this theertham (or holy water) from the Sanjeevaraya Pushkarini, all types of diseases are getting cured. We completed our Darshan here very quickly as they was not much crowd on that day. We took some theertham in a can for home.

Our next destination was Sripurm which has Golden temple of Goddess Lakshmi Devi near Vellore in Tamil Nadu. We reached Vellore around 3.30pm from Aragonda and had of Lunch in Vellore. As it was just 4.00pm and as we want to visit Golden temple during lightings we went to Vellore fort to spend an hour or so…

The Vellore Fort's ownership passed from Vijayanagara Kings, to the Bijapur Sultans, to Marathas, to the Carnatic Nawabs and finally to the British, who held the fort until India gained independence. During British rule, the Tippu Sultan's family and the last king of Sri Lanka, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha were held in as royal prisoners in the fort. The fort houses a Museum, Christian church, a Muslim mosque and a Hindu temple, the latter of which is famous for its magnificent carvings. The Museum was already closed by the time we visited and as we do not have much time we did not visited Temple or Mosque. We just went on thru Fort walls to see surroundings. There is an artificial cannel kinda construction around the fort that might be created as a security measures. Now this cannel is used for Boating.

After the Fort visit, we went to Siripuram Golden Temple. Mobile Phones or any other electronic devices are not allowed inside the temple. You need to walk thru big Star shaped path to reach Golden Temple. The Temple was really beautiful with Lightings around it. And the Shadow of the Golden Temple (Elephants, Pillars etc) in the Small artificial lake surrounding it should not be missed. But one thing I did not like is the high publicity of the ‘Amma’ inside the temple. Check Some photos of the Temple here.

Siddara Betta - Trekking and Cave Exploration

Our Project team was planning to go out from long time.. finally the day has come... we checked with many options like Wonderla etc.... I suggested trekking... then we googled for some good place ... after reviewing some blogs we finally decided Siddara Betta as it has trekking, temple and most importantly Caves.

The Place...

Siddara Batta is a rocky hill 3660 feet above sea level. It is Sacred Place where many sadhus/Holy spiritual men made meditation and worship of Lord Shiva. We can still see some sadhus meditating here and some more are in samadhi state. Here is a famous temple situated at the Top of the Hill. Though the major crowd which visits here are pilgrims, this place is also interests for trekkers and other nature lovers. The main attractive spot here is the Lakshmi Cave, which is more than a kilometer deep and a visit to this cave is an adventure in itself.

The Plan...

Our Team members - Ramesh, Kharibam, Mahesh, Preetam, Swapnil, Kowsalya, Vinod, Kavya, Sachin and me planned to meet in office near Mekhri circle on Friday, 10th Dec 2010 @ 7.15 AM. Other team mate Rimple missed this as he was on vacation. We all met at the office by 7.45AM. Mahesh arranged a Tempo Traveler for this purpose. We all get into this and started our journey.

The Route…
Siddara Betta is around 12 Km from Koratagere in Tumkur district and is around 85 km away from the Bangalore (Mekhri circle).

We had our breakfast in Kamath hotel in Tumkur road on the way to Siddara betta. Nice Idly Vada and Dosas available there. We enquired for rice to parcel for lunch at hill top; we knew that there are no hotels available around Siddara betta. But it was not available at that time. So we started our journey back hoping to get lunch parcel in some daba on the way. We reached the flyover before Tumkur in a short time and started enquiring this place.

Important confusing fact is that there are two Siddara bettas .. One near dobhaspet and one near koratagere. Our destination is Siddara betta near koratagere. We need to take service road at this flyover (this place name is Dobhaspet) and take right turn to reach koratagere and then Siddara betta. We reached Siddara betta around 11 AM. We did not get food on the way. We checked for the food at the base and ordered at a small hotel to have it after coming back from trekking.

The Trek…

There are steps till the temple. We started going in that route to the hill top, meanwhile we met a localite/guide he said there is another way to trek which pass thru many other places of hill. Then we hired his service (for `400/-) for our trek and started trekking with him. The trekking was thru steep hill rocks, there is no path and it is lil slippery. On the way we saw some small cave and spent some time over there. Then we started our trekking again and in middle the guide forgot the route, after searching for 5-10mins we were in the right way and joined the steps path to the temple after almost 1 hour trek.

I’m already exhausted even though we took frequent intervals, as it was taking time for me, so I asked other team members to go ahead with the trek. I took almost 15 mins rest and started trekking again. Meanwhile other team members reached temple had bath and completed puja (it’s good to carry another pair of dress). By the time I reached the temple they were in Cave exploration. I had Quick darshan and hired other guide service (for `50/-) to join the team members inside the cave. There are many guides available near the cave. It took just 5-10 mins to meet other team members in the cave. Then we all started the Cave exploration.

The Cave ...

The cave is starts from the temple (near the Shiva linga) and ends outside the temple. The cave was long and the cave exploration was thrilling. There are some Samadhis of sadhus inside the caves who meditated here some time back.

We started to move inside caves. The passage was very small at some places; the rocks were quite slippery and sharp. At some places we need to cross big rocks... there were some real low rise rocks where we had to literally crawl to pass thru ...It was awesome !!

We also reached a few open areas with vegetation. One of these areas housed large roots which are good enough to be a nice swing. We had some group photos over there... and finally we manage to reach end of that cave after passing thru some bees :-(. It is good to carry Torchlight with you that helped us a lot in these caves.

There are many monkeys around this hill like in many other places which take away if you carry any plastic bags (i think it’s a nice way to reduce the usage of plastics :-) ).

From here we can trek to the hill top where we can see another temple and some meditation points and good 360 view of surrounding places.

But we could not go there as it was already 3pm to start the journey back to Bangalore. This time we used the steps to come back to the base unlike the trek path we used while going to the top. On the way we went to a place called Pyramid where two sadhus are still meditating. We did not disturb them and came down to the base and started our journey back to Bangalore. On the way we passed thru the Elevated expressway in Tumkur road that was newly opened on that day, which saved almost one hour of our journey.

Other places to see nearby - Devarayana Durga and there is a hill nearby with a fort at the top

Accommodation – no accommodation available, you need to carry tents if you want to stay night

Food – Kamath Hotel and some Dabas available on the way in Tumkur road. But no food is available at Siddara Betta. Good to carry from Bangalore.

Transportation - Self

Nandi hills and surrounding places

It was a long pending trip with entire family. As my youngest brother coming from Hyderabad to Bangalore for holiday we asked our parents also to come here so that we go somewhere around Bangalore

We initially thought to go to Nandi hills but later thought about other places too, after thinking of many places and searching in internet and blogs we decided 3 places – Nandhi hills, Bannergatta National Park and Sivasamudhra. Ha.. finally freezed to the initial place Nandhi Hills as it is nearby from my place, Sahakara Nagar. We decided to go early morning to see sun rise @ Nandhi hills and then visit to Bogha Nandheeswara Temple, Mudhena halli and Devanahalli fort.

We started around 4.30 am from home and reached Nandi hills by 5.30 am. It was butiful and my parents could not come out of the vehicle as it was too cold and totally covered with fog. We waited in the vehicle for some time as the ticket counter was not yet opened to go to the top of the hill. It was 6 am by the time we reach th top of the hill after getting the ticket.

Just after coming out of the vehicle, we went to the back side of KSTDC's Hotel Mayura Pine Top for proper view of Sun rise... But as we are not sure of the sun rise view point we came back to the initial enquired for the Sun rise view point after having hot tea. They said it would be 7.00/7.30 Am by the sun rises. So we had an hour or so to roam around before the sun rise. We left our parents at a hotel as they were feeling too cold in that environment and went across the temples and parks. We could not see others/places clearly as there was too much fog.

It was almost 7.30 am, but still no sun rise... so we had our breakfast and then waiting for sun rise... Around 8.00 am we could see only partial sun rise. It was Okay. We waited for Sun rise at Tippu drop till 10.30 am, but still no luck. Then we decided to go back... We went to Yoga Nandhiswara temple and Tippu Summer Palace while coming back to the base. Check some more snaps below.

Bhoga Nandhiswara temple is in Nandi village which is around 8Km from the base of Nandi hills. This is historical temple with high architecture values. This temple constructed in ninth century in Dravidian style and upgraded by 5 kings in different periods of time. The courtyard surrounding the temple is huge and the temple itself has several separate areas with small temples. During our visit, surroundings were too oily may be because of Karthika Pournami festival. The main complex of the temple houses a statue of Shiva and Parvati in the same stone with a intricately carved Kalyana Mantapa in front and lots of pillars; the Kalyana Mantapa in front of middle temple looks similar to the Belur/Halebidu built by the Hoysalas with micro carvings. A separate area has a dance platform and a place for the king to sit and watch the performance. The large peaceful tank/Kalyani is in the next area. There is good garden maintained outside the temple. You can spend at least half a day here visiting temple and enjoying the nature outside the temple.

Our next destination was Mudhena halli which is around 5Km from Nandi village. It is the birthplace of Sir. M. Vishveswarayya. His ancestral home, where he was born, has been preserved for public viewing. There is a small museum with the items he used. We can see his Bhata Rathna medal in this museum. And there are many photos of him with historical leaders and kings of that time. And Vishveswarayya's samadhi is also nearby.

Initially we thought to go to some small waterfalls near Nandi village while coming back as pointed by my younger brother. But as we are not sure of the route for this waterfalls plan and started journey back to Devanahalli.

Devanahalli fort is a small fort with only huge walls covering small village. We can just go to the top of these fort walls and spend some time over there. Then while coming back to Bangalore we visited Tippu's birth place near by the Devanahalli fort.

Jonnawada

Jonnawada is a temple town 12 km Nellore in Andhra Pradesh. This is famous for Sri Mallikarjuna swamy and Kamakshi amma temple. In tretayuga Mahamuni Kasyapa Brahma performed yagna and pleased Lord Mallikarjuna Swamy thus this place is named as ‘Yagnavatika Jonnawada’. Sri Mallikarjuna Swamy Kamakhsi tai grant to the innumerable devotes their desires, as their God head. Since then he continues conferring boons and his blessings on his devotees. This temple is constructed in the year 1150( Tretayuga). The goddess Kamkshi is belived as an incarnation of Shakti. A ‘Sri Chakram’ was installed here by Sri Jagadguru Sankaracharya. Brahma Rushi Sri Kashyap Mahamuni visited Bhoolokam (The Earth) and wanted to perform Yagna and chosen north of vedadri as Yagna Vatika (place to perform yagna) After successful completion of the Yagna a bright light appeared. It has spread over the whole bhoolokam. Later Lord Eswara appeared as Lord Mallikarjuna, who came out from fire of Yagna.

Kalyanotsavam puja for Mallikarjuna swamy and Ammavaru was long pending for us. So we thought to go over there to perform the puja during the Karthika masam(during November).

The puja at temple was around 10 am so we started early from Gudur around 7 am. Jonnawada is around 50 km from Gudur. Our in-law's family also joined us for this trip.

We reached Jonnawada around 8am and went for dharshan and Kshirabisheka for Mallikarjuna swamy. It was around 9 am when the dharshan was completed. Then we spent time on verifying boards available in the temple about Dhwadasa (12) Jyothirlinga temples dedicated to lord Shiva and Astadasa (18) shakthi peethams dedicated to Ammavaru. I counted and wondered to see that I have already visited almost one third of them. Mean while Amma and wife lit Karthika deepam in the temple.

Then the Kalyanotsvam started. It took around 1 hour to complete the puja. Then we went around seeing Pennar river. It was hot afternoon so we did not go to the river for the dip. Then we started our journey back to Gudur. We initially thought to go to Nellore city to have lunch at Murali krishna Hotel. But due to time constraints had lunch at a hotel in Reliance petrol bunk in the highway. The food was just Okay, not upto the expectations.

Accomodation - Average - Some TTD Managed rooms are available

Food - Below Average except Temple's Annadhana facility

Transportation - Self, No regular buses available. Some Autos are running from Nellore

Other places to see nearby - Narasimha Konda is another temple dedicated to Lakshminarasimha swami is around 3 to 4 km from Jonnawada. We could not visit this place this time. I visited this place long back during 1999. It was a nice experience to trek this small hill. Even a road is available to reach the top of the hill.

Vedagiri Lakshmimarasimha Swamy devastanam came into being nearly 500 years ago, on the summit of Narasimhakonada. According to the rock inscriptions, this temple was built by the Pallava king Narsimha Varma in the ninth century. Legend goes that the sage Kasyapa established the temple on the bank of Pennar. And the Vedic scripture “Brahmapurana” reveals that the Saptarishis performed “yagnam” on the top of Narasimhakonda.