An engineer by profession and an avid traveler by choice! A photographer by passion!

I have been roaming many different parts of India and UAE in life. The galleries have been posted after my visits but they seem to be deep embedded in the blogs. I have created an index for all these travel galleries which should help in easier navigation for all visitors to my blog.

From the heritage ruins of Hampi to the glittering cityscape of Dubai all have been linked to this index which can be accessed from the link below.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE GALLERY INDEX

Last post was the travelogue to my long past visit of Sharavan Belagola. This post will not extend that discussion but is a pdf form of the complete travelogue.

My intention is that these documents might help people in as a guide to their trip. Do’s and Dont’s maybe. If the document gets printed it can be used as a focal item for the trip.

Shravana Belagola is a holy place for people following Jain religion. One of our college friends is a regular visitor to this place. He asked us if we would be interested to join him. I along with my roommate confirmed for the coming weekend. Our friend was nice enough to alter his plan to accommodate our convenience.

We planned for a night stay at the holy place as we were not sure how much time it would take for the whole trip. It was not a tourist season so we managed to get a good place to stay at big discounted rates. This trip was made in March 2006, long time back.

We started our journey on Saturday reaching there by late evening. The bus journey took about 3 hours which included one halt for some snacks.

The actual place of worship is on a hill top which has to be climbed bare foot. The hill is built up of solid rock and gets heated up quickly after sun rise. We planned to start the climb before sun rise making the climb comfortable. To get up early we had an early dinner and slipped in beds.

We got up at 4 am lazily completing the morning chores to get ready by 5:30 am. That was quite early for me. On the hill top is the statue of a Jain saint. People willing to climb on top of the statue to perform a sacred ritual have to buy a specific color of cloth to be worn during the ritual. Our friend also bought that set of clothes which have to be bought at the base of hill.

The whole climbing till top took about an hour. It was solid rock cut to create steps in it. By the time we reached the top of, sun had risen and the steps were starting to burn. We appreciated our friend’s decision to start ascend before sunrise in cool temperature. We reached 30 minutes early before the gates would open for rituals.

We utilized this time to explore around the top taking some photos and admiring the visible view. The statue and surrounding architecture on the top was carved out of hard rock. It was quite similar to what I have seen in books for Jain temples. This was the first time I was visiting a Jain religion holy place and I was quite excited about it.

It was time for gates to open and people were going inside the holy place. We also lined up in the queue to go inside. On reaching the compound inside, it was a mesmerizing structure standing right in front of us.

It was the statue of Bahubali who was a preacher for Jain religion and people started treating him as a god and the legacy has continued. The height of statue was around 150 ft. It was a monolithic statue which had been carved during the regime of a king. We had to stretch our necks to see the top. We took some photos standing near the feet of statue at such an angle that the entire statue was visible in the background.

By this time a lot of people had come in the compound and were sitting right in the middle as though some auction was going to happen.

To my surprise an actual auction was being setup. The purpose of auction was for the first person who will do the sacred ritual by going to the top the statue. This seemed quite nasty to me and was amazed at the whole show. Money had not spared even gods and had made roads to their doors as well. The visitors were mainly Jain people who had come from different parts of the country for worship. That day the auction was finally settled at around 5Lakhs. The ritual is a small affair which includes pouring milk from a silver utensil on the head of statue and finally smearing vermilion on the forehead. People who had bought special ritual clothes were only allowed to climb till the top of statue.

Once the winner of auction performed the first ritual, all the remaining people got in queue to perform the ritual. It is considered sacred for anyone who performs the whole ritual of going till the top and pouring milk/water on the statue. To climb the top of statue there was a makeshift platform setup. Since it was season time they had put the platform, otherwise in non auspicious months, the platform is not there and there is no way of going to the top of statue except for air support.

Our friend also got in queue waiting for his turn of ritual completion. Once he was done we came outside the compound and he changed back to his original clothes. We started taking photos of the place and surrounding. Also we did not have anything planned for that day. We knew that we will be able to reach our home in a maximum of 6 hours so we decided to just hang around the place and know it better.

With the hill top getting hotter and difficult to walk around bare feet we decided to descend down. This was the tough part as the sun was right over the head and the rock stairs were emitting fire. We just rushed to our rooms so that we could put on some protective gear. We were very relieved after wearing shoes.

It was lunch time by now and we decided to have final meal at this place before returning. Some of our friend’s relatives had also come to visit this place. They were aware of good eating place in that area.

The eating joints in this place are inside houses where people sell homemade food with cuisines from the regions of Gujarat and Rajasthan. I had never eaten any food item of that region and found it quite good. We filled our stomach to maximum and started our journey back home reaching in about 4 hours.

Seeing the monolithic statue was the highlight of the journey and I had a great overall experience.