High on Highways

Last month, one beautiful Saturday evening saw us become proud owners of TUV300. We couldn't wait to hit the roads. After some discussion we zeroed upon visiting Somanathpura temple as it's a short drive and I love visiting ancient temples. I wrote another post on the Hoysala temples that I visited recently. Here's the link  if you are interested. Sri Chennakeshava temple at Somanathpura We started at around 9:00 AM on Sunday morning after a good breakfast at home. We picked the NICE road - Kanakapura - Malavalli - Begur - Somanathpura route. I love the Kanakapura route as it has numerous banyan trees, providing ample shade and green cover. But unfortunately some patches were under maintenance and this delayed our drive. After numerous pit-stops and navigating bad road patches, we finally managed to reach by 2:00 PM. We parked our car below a tree nearby as there is no dedicated parking area. But yes, you still need to pay parking fee, apart from the entrance...

Every Friday brings the same question - where do we go this weekend? After a lot of research on net, Hubby and I decided to visit a few lesser known temples of the Hoysala period. Sri Panchalingeshwara Temple, Govindanahalli  Sri Lakshmi Narayana Temple, Hosaholalu  Sri Brahmeshvara Temple, Kikkeri  Considering the summer heat, we planned to start as early as possible. A search on Google maps, showed us the below route. Who are we to question the all-knowing maps, we decided to take it! Hebbal - Yeshwanthpur - Nelamangala - Kunigal - CR Patna - Govindanahalli - Hosaholalu - Kikkeri  We hit the roads by 6:30 in the morning. The whole drive was a breeze thanks to the well maintained 4 lane NH until CR Patna. The approach road to these temples weren't bad either. We stopped for breakfast at hotel New Anand Bhavan at Koppa. After a hearty breakfast, we headed towards our first stop - Govindanahalli.  Sri Panchalingeshwara Temple, Govindanahalli ...