Here are some of the prominent Ganapathy temples of coastal Karnataka. It is non-exhaustive list. The mentioning is based on frequently visited temples and other places I have visited. I have given brief details of the temples. If you observe, most of the beautiful temples are situated in Kundapur taluk of Udupi district with awesome nature cover. All pictures are self taken.
1) Sri Sharavu Mahaganapathy Temple, Mangalore, Dakshina Kannada District
Situated in heart of Mangalore city, the temple attracts huge crowd during Ganesha Chaturthy. It has mythological importance too! Even though Shiva is present, the many deity is Mahaganapthy. It is udbhava ganapathy as per records and has trunk twisted towards right (Balamuri)
SHARAVU MAHAGANAPATHY
2) Sri Vinayaka Temple, ANEGUDDE (kumbhashi), Kundapur Taluk, Udupi District
Situated close to NH-66 and in mid of beautiful nature, this temple also attracts many devotees all through the year. It is situated near Kundapur taluk of Udupi district. The place also has shiva temple near by.
ANEGUDDE VINAYAKA TEMPLE
3) Sri Siddhi-Vinayaka Temple, Hattiyangadi, Kundapur Taluk, Udupi District
Situated close to Kundapur, this temple also attracts many devotees throughout the year. The temple can be spotted on the way to Kollur from Kundapur (Just 4kms from Kundapur).
HATTIYANGADI SIDDHIVINAYAKA
4) Sri Ganapathy temple, Idagunji, Honnavar, Uttara Kannada District
This is the most beautiful temple since it is situated in mid of wondeful nature. Uttara kannada is blessed with good natural beauty. This is reason why Idagunji is so special. It is the highest visited in coast of all the temples. There is queue for darshan spanning more than 2kms during sankashti and ganesha chaturthi. The temple is very close to Honnavar town.
IDAGUNJI
5) Sri Maha Ganapathy temple, Gokarna, Uttara Kannada District
Gokarna is famous for Mahabaleshwara temple. However the importance is equal to Ganapathy situated nearby due to well known mythological reasons. As said earlier, Gokarna is also covered with beautiful nature with great beaches and rivulets. Also Gokarna is the highest raining place in coastal Karnataka (around 5000mm).
GOKARNA MAHA GANAPATHY
6) Sri Mahaganapathy temple, Southadka, Kokkada, Dakshina Kannada district
This is peculiar temple since it has no roof. Quite natural Ganapathy :) (Watch small video here). It seems all efforts to build permanent structure have gone in vain. Hence nowadays there are no plans to develop any sort of protection cover for the temple. Situated in mid of forest area, this temple attracts many devotees. Most of the devotees who visit dharmasthala do visit this temple too. The appa prasada and avalakki panchakajjaya prepared here with ghee is the yummiest.
SOUTHADKA MAHAGANAPATHY
7) Sri vinayaka temple, Guddattu, Kundapur Taluk, Udupi District
This one I recently discovered via my uncle. This is becoming famous nowadays. The speciality is udbhava ganapathy on the huge boulder. The pooje is done to the stone ganapathy itself. The ganapathy is filled with water till its neck and there is space to hold water. Mythology says Ganapathy consumed too much honey which resulted in body heat. Shiva as a result filled ganapathy with water till neck. The famous offering here is ayirkoda seve (1000 koda water seve to ganapathy). This is done only twice a day since it is tidious task. There are dedicated members who assist in seve. During the offering the water is taken out and panchamrutha abhisheka is done to stone idle. After that water is filled till neck and the stone idol is cleaned not to leave any oily surfaces. Then again water is removed and filled back to neck portion. This is repeated again for second time. This offering is done along with vedic chanting of Rudradhyaya. Even though abshisheka is done to Ganesha idol, it is called as Rudrabhisheka since shiva has prominence of filling water. As of now many people are registering for offering and the new ones will get date only after 2013 mid! The pradakshine to temple is the big boulder itself. It is around 500m in perimeter.
GUDDATTU VINAYAKA TEMPLE
ROCK FROM WHERE GANAPATHY IS ORIGINATED
BEAUTIFUL NATURE NEAR-BY
The temple can be spotted on the way from Brahmavar towards Kollur. There is small town called shiriyaara. From here you need to take 1km inner route to reach temple. Watch a small video here
8) Stone Ganapathy temple, Padumundu, Kundapur Taluk, Udupi District
This was old temple however due to lack of roads, never was in picture. Now small road is built and one can visit the temple. This temple is nearby Guddattu temple surrounded by beautiful nature and stream. The temple is made of stone and the deity sits in middle of huge boulders. Besides ganapathy, one can find parvathy and ishwara idols too. The real attraction is the beautiful nature surrounding the temple.
STONE GANAPATHY
ENTRANCE
SCENE NEAR-BY TEMPLE
9) Sri Anantheshwara Siddhi-Vinayaka temple, Madhur, Kasaragod district
Even though this temple is not part of Karnataka, people of coastal Karnataka have close affiliation with the temple. The main attraction is its architecture. Please read complete blog on the temple here. Watch small video here
This was the scene on Saturday morning. The same sort of scene could be seen even during afternoon. There was no cloud build up at all till 4PM. It was hot and humid throughout the day and previous day too! [It was sweating like hell]. We had been to temple near Kundapur to attend a function. There was no sign of rain.
SUNNY SATURDAY MORNING
Around 4PM clouds started hovering around Udupi region and at about 6PM stage was set. It did not even start with drizzle. The rains started pouring with full intensity and it did not stop until next day 11AM. The scene was completely opposite to what was observed earlier. From 6:30AM to 9:30AM, it was like a cloudburst with fierceful rain. The speciality was just intense rain, no lightning, no thunder, no gusty wind!
SUNDAY MORNING DELUGE
STREAM AND FARM LAND UNIFIED
OVERFLOWING STREAM
Even though rains receded after 11AM, the floods did not until Monday morning. This was the high intensity rain of the season. Even the upper region like ours were under water for sometime. The stream was overflowing and entire village was under watery gravy.
We had to leave for one more temple on Sunday and here is the video taken during our travel. Watch the scenes of flooding and overflowing stream. There is no Met Observatory in Kaup. The nearest one is Udupi and Mulki which recorded 15 and 19 cms of rain respectively during the deluge day. Most probably Kaup would have recorded more than that.
The video!
Watch the video taken in Canon EOS-550D with 1080 progressive scan and 25fps frame rate. The pictures were taken with Canon SX210IS barring the first one. The video was composed and transformed to MP4 (H.264) format using KDENLIVE. This time I used video bitrate of 18Kbps while still maintaining 384kbps AAC audio
Clubbing all the Monsoon videos, I created small documentary on the Indian Monsoon [even though videos are only from my place :-)]. Nevertheless, you see the same scenes across west coast of India. The video is inspired from one of the videos in youtube (watch it here). Same music used too! Since the videos were shot in Canon SX210IS, there is no 1080p version. I used same encoding as before except for 720p 30fps and 12kbps video bitrate. Please watch and comment for improvements.
Music: Wonderful chillout music Lagoona mana by Christian Rusch
I was planning for long time to visit kotilinga temple. This day I made up my mind to visit the deity at KGF. Since my house was near to Old Madras Road, I started to wait for a bus towards KGF. However I could not get even a single one. I had to reach Majestic to catch a bus. Since it was express, it will not stop even in my place. I caught up with a passenger who was also travelling to Kotilinga. The co-passenger had to get down at Kolar due to some reasons. As soon bus reached Kolar bypass, the beautiful stone hills attracted me. I did hear that there are so many beautiful spots here.
I reached KGF around 11:30AM. Apparently it is under-developed town. There are no proper facilities. The MPP of this region is Railway Minister of state also. Bus stand looks to be garbage dump. But the irony was it was gold field some time back. People are really good. One person told me that buses towards vellore, gudiyattam, v.kote go via Kammasandra where temple is located. I caught up a private bus for Rs.5 and got down at Kammasandra. A boy was also travelling to the same place and he guided me to the stop. Apart from temple it is just like an under developed indian village :(.
Temple has wide area. Not many people were seen at that day. Apart from that I was getting too hungry. What a co-incidence. Free meals are served every day here. I enjoyed anna saaru and mosaranna. The food was very good and tasty. I donated some amount for annadaana too. Free meals are served from 12:30PM to 2:00PM. The entrance fee to temple is Rs.5 while Rs.100 for camera. I paid the money since this was first time I was visiting. Temple is covered with bountiful of shivalingas. You are tempted to take more and more snaps. Inside the temple you find many other temples too! The main deity is Manjunatha Swamy. Apart from that, one can find Brahma-Vishnu-Maheshwara temple, Venkatesha temple, Annapoorneshwari temple, Santoshi Maata temple. In between one can also spot Ganapthy idols too. Temple has around 82lakhs shivalingas. The target is to reach 1-crore as per the boards. You can install shiva lingas too! One needs to contact temple administration regarding this. Moving forward, the huge shivalinga with Nandi facing is very attractive. People who do not carry camera have to pay Rs.40 to take photo beside huge Shivalinga. Exclusive camera persons are present to take photos and print them.
NANDI FACING SHIVALINGA
I took around 150 photos to compensate the camera fee :). Later I travelled back towards Bangalore. Despite of huge number buses, the roads are completely pot-holed. I took government bus towards KGF which costed Rs.7. That is the reason private buses were crowded. I took express bus from KGF to bangalore. It started around 4:15PM. The tiredness made me to sleep till Hosakote. I reached home around 6:30PM.
The temple is situated around 7km north-east of Kasargod town of Kerala state. Even if Lord Ananteshwara is established in temple, main attraction is the Lord Vinayak appearing on the wall. The temple surrounded with full greenery. The temple town has magnificent look with hills at nearby distance and the coconut-arecanut plantations. Madhuvaahini stream flows from north to south in front of temple. The temple has 3 level structure facing east and having shape of "GajaPrushta". The same type of structure can be seen in Ananteshwara temple of Udupi near Sri Krishna Math. The top two levels have copper cover while the lowest one has tile cover. One can observe beautiful sculpture in and around temple. It is believed that the "GajaPrushta" shape is influenced from ancient Buddhism. It is believed that even Nepali style may have influenced temple structure. The heavy rains of coast has influenced such a structure.
THE STRUCTURE OF MADHURU TEMPLE
FRONT PORTION
SIDDHI VINAYAK TEMPLE
There is a small gopura in west of temple. The devotees are allowed to enter only from here. Lunch House (Bhojana Shaale) can be found towards left of main entrance. You can view the backside of temple from west entrance. There is a small pond towards north-east of temple. Madhuvahini stream flows in front of temple. During heavy monsoon season, the stream swells and enters temple premises too. Towards left of temple frontside, you can find seva kacheri. All announcements are done in Hindi, Malayalam, Tulu and Kannada. The notice boards are written even in Kannada Language. In front of temple, one can see bronze pillar (Dhwaja Sthamba). Lord ananteshwara is established facing east. While you walk around temple, first temple which is found is Kashi Vishwanatha. You can also find prasada distribution counter near-by. The Lord Vinayak icon is facing south. It is not visible clearly. One can have somewhat clear sight if viewed from nearby wall. Few steps further you can see Ayyappa and Parvathi temples. You can also view the stack of coconut meant for Gana Homa and Pumpkin meant for lunch. Still further, one can see Subramanya Gudi. Nearby, one can see temple kitchen and well too. Near by well, one can see trace of sword created by Tippu Sultan. History says that Tippu Sultan had plans to demolish the temple. However since he drank water here, it is believed that he left temple untouched with small trace. Because of this, the king of Mayappadi conducted large scale moodappa seve here on 1795. The area around temple is wide. One can also enjoy the oil paintings on the wall of temple.
TEMPLE POND
PUMPKIN STACK AND OIL PAINTINGS
BEAUTIFUL SCULPTURES
The shiva linga is bit special here since it has some traces of injury. It is believed that a lady named "MADARU" while cutting grasses, her tool hit a stone from where blood started to flow. When she informed the incident to her relatives, all of them approached the territory king on the incident. It is believed that king and the people when prayed together with an intention to build temple near water body, the icon appeared near banks of Madhuvahini stream. Since animals were leading friendly life in that region, people decided to construct a temple in the same place as per the folklore. Backside of temple has banyan tree. The mark of Tiger-Cow resting together which is the Tiger stone can be even found now. The name "MADARU" turned into "MADHURU" as per folklore.
Lord Vinayaka appearing on wall: Once the children of priest of Madhuru during festival time, drew picture of Lord Vinayaka and decorated it with flowers. They took the Rice powder brought by elders and mixed it with water and created round pastes. These were offered as Naivedya to Lord Vinayaka by the children. The elders got surprised and performed rituals as per tradition. They mixed jaggery to the paste. Unboiled "PACHAPPA" naivedya started as tradition from this day. Later a sculptor of the drawing was raised with KaduSharkaraPaaka. To this sculptor, a gudi with small door was also constructed as per folklore. The lord Vinayaka here is Balamuri Vinayaka (trunk twisted towards right).
Specialities: 1) Here Moodappa Seve, Udayastamana Seve and GanaHoma Seve are prominet for Lord Vinayaka. Rudrabhisheka is famous seve for Lord Ananteshwara. 2) Every year 5 day annual festival is celebrated. The fourth day is Bedi (fireworks) day. After performing pooje in Uliyattadka Moola Sthana, the special fireworks is peformed in Madhuru temple Bedi Katte. The next day is last day of festival. All along 5 days special programmes like Sangeetha, Yakshagana are conducted. 3) Every day devotees are served with free lunch. You need to take lunch token before 12:30PM.
How to reach: 1) There is ample bus facility from Kasargod town. 2) No direct bus from Mangalore. One has to travel to Kasargod and find another bus. 3) Better to hire taxi from Mangalore. You can even visit attractive places nearby. 4) For people who travel on their own vehicle from Mangalore, one has to find deviation 4km before Kasargod which is called as chowki. From here take a left turn. From here onwards there is no proper road directions. You will have to take help from local people. Even Google Map may help. Otherwise you can even reach till Kasargod and take Madhuru road. You may get good guidance from here.
Stay: There is only one Madhuvahini guest house nearby temple. You can even stay in Kasargod town. If you prefer Karnataka, stay either in Mangalore or Puttur.
Temple Timings: 6:30AM to 12:30PM 5:30PM to 8:30PM (watch out for long gap)
Time to visit: November to February. During Sankashti, Ganesha Chaturthi, Sundays, Maha Shivaratri and annual festival, the temple is heavily crowded.
Here is first 1080p video uploaded by me to YouTube. This was first time I was uploading Full HD version to youtube. I was just testing the EOS 550D camera with 1080p/25fps movie mode. The initial part is blurred since lens was put in MF mode. So took some time to focus the subject properly. The subject is nothing special. It is usual scene of dogs playing on the road. In my case it's neighbor's dog and a street dog. The neighbor's dog was tied in front of house since it was raining on Sunday. A street dog came and started playing with the home dog. I captured some of their moments and uploaded to YouTube. The kids near by thought the dogs were fighting. After sometime both dogs got bored and the street dog went away.
It is near 2 minute video which was stored in MOV format. The original was around 620MB later reduced to 170MB using KDENLIVE. The video was converted to MP4 format with same H.264 encoding@12K bitrate and 384kbps audio.
Hope you will enjoy the video! Expect more 1080p videos in my YouTube channel :-). Share if you enjoyed it and comment if you have suggestions.
This was on 24-June-2011 when it rained briefly for few minutes. Finally I captured some heavy showers in my camera. It was raining too much a week before which I missed. We have a camera in house however parents are not interested to use it :(. It started to rain around 9:00AM and went on to become heavy shower for about 5 minutes. However, later in the day sky was clear with few clouds hovering.
The Monsoon has been sluggish this time in India with too much flooding in Assam and less rain in eastern side. Too much pacific typhoons also have monsoon clouds away from India. Ghat areas of Karnataka has not seen much rain too. Even Bangalore had lowest rain in June after 112 years. Hope everything will be alright in mid of July.
No music this time since I wanted to maintain natural sound of rain. Please watch the video and share your thoughts. Hope I will get opportunity to capture torrential rains somewhere around July.
Pray for good monsoon every year throughout India.
One more long drive! This time it is me alone in Maruti Ritz diesel. It is fantastic car and you will never feel strained by driving for many distance. It was around 415kms of drive with me driving alone. This was first time I was driving alone for such a long distance (Earlier was 260kms from Sirsi to Kaup). I was really excited :-) since the pickup was too good (190NM of torque @2000rpm was superb). The torque could be felt especially from Sakaleshpur to Mangalore where the geography is almost hilly with too many curves and blind spots. The worst thing was ordinary KSRTC buses were overtaking despite vehicle's presence in opposite direction. I encountered four to five times. I had to slip down the road or stop at the middle of highway to avoid them. They do not have pick up even then adamant to overtake resulting in accidents. Switch on headlights and start overtaking. Apart from this bitter experience everything was perfect and really enjoyed drive.
Since it was Monsoon season, I enjoyed some of the moments in Shiraadi Ghat. The Ghat road was OK however is about to get damaged (could see parched area in many places). It was drizzling in Ghat and fantastic to cherish. The streams were flowing however with not much vigor since Monsoon has not yet reached peak. In mid of journey I stopped at many places to take photographs. This time no videos since I was alone driving.
Watch the journey photo collection with wonderful music.
Music: ASP Project - See the Sun Video Editor: KDENLIVE under Linux Mint Maya Camera: Canon SX 210IS
Our table fan manufactured by Cinni recently completed 40 years and it is still operating young and energetic :). It was bought by my father during his first job. From then onwards it has not even seen a single repair. It does not mean that we use it rarely however it lasted long. Even today we use it daily.Only once the body was coated with black paint to prevent rust. Otherwise even now it's air circulation is like a jet. It has got four blades which is of old style and an antique style knob behind to facilitate rotation.
The only part which is not functioning is it's potentiometer. Due to this, fan has the highest speed irrespective of regulator position. We hope that the fan will still stay for very long time.
One more drive! This time its through jungles from Kukke to Dharmastala spanning for 52kms. The speciality is dense jungles and many streams in between. The drive from Kukke to Gundya forest gate is fantastic and has lot of curves. From Gundya forest gate till the 'Dharmastala deviation' is NH-75 which runs from Bangalore to Mangalore. From the deviation till Dharmastala is of semi-ghat type with some steep curves and narrow roads. Through out the journey there are lots of blind spots which one has to be careful about. Watch out for nasty vehicles overtaking at the curves. Since it was bharath bundh, the road was almost clear. However there were some tourist vehicles plying along the way. The places are not densely populated and hence no mob created trouble. However small group of people questioned us in gundya forest gate (which is the best place to catch hold of people since it is busy junction). We told them that our visit pre-planned and God will curse us if we do not do so. Those people let us go after brief discourse. I was about to take up state tax which was high in country but did not dare fearing retaliation in terms of violence [may burn our car :-)]. One of the person warned us that people will pelt stones en-route but nothing such happened.
It is wonderful to drive along such routes especially I love to drive under such conditions [provided roads are good :-)]. Towards Dharmastala roads are only patched but not relayed. So the roads are uneven. The patches may turn into pot-holes during monsoon. There are small pot-holes too. Watch out for them. They can create problems in narrow road.
Watch the video with Ulrich Schnauss Monday Paracetamol music.
Watch my other videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/nakumar85/videos
