Weekend Getways from Bangalore..Kaidala

The challenge is when you almost exhaust your one day round trips, to keep churning more routes and adventure.  Normally when we plan a one day trip we would like to cover maximum.  Last month we undertook a round trip of 460 kms which was exhausting due to intermittent bad roads.  This time around we were fortunate to cover 340 kms comfortably because of  NH 4 and SH 6 which takes one to Shimoga and Honnavar from Tumkur.

So when we started off  our primary destination was Dasarighatta, which is known for the famous Choudeswari Devi.  To travel the distance of  nearly 160 kms without covering any places in between would have been tiresome and boring.  So we decided to take a breakfast break at Kamat Upachar near Dobbaspet.  After a sumptous breakfast and freshen up we moved towards our destination but in between we saw the tourism board of  Kaidala, it was pointing 27 kms from Dobbaspet, but i have travelled that route, the road is not so good.  So decided to stick to NH 4, and approaching Tumkur there is a deviation to Shimoga.  We took the byepass, my hunch told me that Kaidala must be enroute.  We enquired and confirmed that a slight deviation of 4 km on SH6 will take us towards Kaidala.

We proceeded towards Kaidala, which is supposed to be birthplace of  fabled Jakanacharya.  There are so many myths associated with this legendary sculpturer, that it is fabled and even a movie is made on this storyline.  But the fact of the matter after seeing the temple i got the impression that it was first of all not a hoysala architecture.  It resembled more from the Vijaynagar Era or Wodeyar era.   This temple has seems to have been resurrected by ASI.  The symbols on the facade of the temple are elephants, fishes etc.

The diety inside the temple belongs to Lord Chennakeshava, which is also present at Belur temple.  This is carved out of the soap stone.  There are not many sculptures on the facade of the temple surprisingly which may have been removed by ASI for fear of vandalism.

I had read an article wherein a famous professor had clearly mentioned that Jakanacharaya is figment of imagination of the ancient folklore.  He was immortalised and credited for the various hoysala temples.  Eversince this news was revealed the guides too nowerdays refrain from uttering his name.  Most of the artisans engaged during the hoysala period have their names etched on the sculpture and monuments.

Kaidala temple complex is managed by priests appointed by Murjai department, who seem to open the temple premise according to their whims and fancies.  Imagine that too on a Sunday an adjacent temple which must have been part of the main complex is separated and handled by another priest family.  Unfortunately the temple was locked at 9.30 am, and we did not want to risk searching for the priest, since we had to proceed a long distance.

The area surrounding the temple is now being landscaped and hopefully it would be a wonderful and serene complex in years to come.  We took the route back to join the SH6 to proceed towards our main destination at Darsarighatta.