A holiday ride to shravanabelagola !!

After a hangover of splendid ride to Horanadu, i was setting up for the next !!

Shravanabelagola scooted into my mind after cogitating all the day.
A solitary ride is usually my choice or with a pillion rider. I mean, I don’t wish to be a part of peloton.
My last ride to horanadu was accompanied by pavan. But this time i gotta a find new one since he was off to Bangalore.
I didn’t take too much of my time to decide whom to take along.
Why worry when i have my dad beside !! He was the prime person to strike my mind !
Reason being, he is also a lover of ride !! Like father, like son !!!
And moreover, he is my Best Friend too.
So the plan was all set and on 24th September 2015 we decided to take up the ride to shravanabelagola !

It is a city located near channarayana pattana of hassan district of Karnataka. There is a BAAHUBALI statue which is monolithic measuring 57ft. This statue was built during 983AD by chaavundaraya who was minister and commander in ganga dynasty. It is one of the largest free standing statues in the world.
In 2007 , this statue was voted by Indians as first of seven wonders of india !!

With full of excitement ,dad and I started our journey at 6:45am from kukke subramanya.
We took our first break at shiradi gadi temple. There is a myth in my locality that,the travellers should stop here and take the blessings of deity.
I prayed for the safe and smooth ride as i knew this will be a long ride covering more than 300km.
After sipping a cup of tea in the shop near by, we were set again !

Dad at gadi

Riding in the Ghat is my all time favorite and Shiradi ghat makes no mistake in proving it right !
Be carefull in the Ghat coz Bullet Tankers that supply LPG from Mangalore to Bangalore interrupts the smooth journey. With the tanks loaded full, it travells with the speed lesser than the ants !! And it is a hectic job to overtake it either !

Concrete ghat road

Concrete roads tempts any rider to accelerate. But its not so safe to do it here,as the vehicles comes from nowhere and may lead to crash !!

I had to keep a finger on pass light to signal the opposite vehicle that he is in a wrong lane !!!!

At Shiradi Ghat

Shiradi ghat was open for traveling since 3months and it had witnessed many accidents, majority caused due to toppling and over speed !!

Meanwhile ,our journey was safe and we were in sakleshpura by 8:45am. Having a brisk breakfast, we geared up again !!

Rice rotti

After a 2hr ride, we crossed hassan and ended up in the double road which  was more tempting than Ghat.
You can’t expect a vehicle moving with a speed lesser than 100kmph here !!!!

Its a common tendency of all to cope up with the environment !! I mean the speed here ! Even a slow moving vehicle gets a power to gear up !
But the pillion rider was not a kind of guy who enjoys speed !! It was my DAD !
He was tapping on my shoulder regularly and was screaming “60..60” lol 😀
Discussing lot many things and enjoying the slow ride,we rode across channarayanapattana and we were just 18km away from historical shravanabelagola !!
We were just few miles away, and dad exclaimed ,”al thoola…!” . I stopped and saw in the direction he was pointing.  And now its my turn to exclaim !!
Yes !! One can see the mighty bahubali as a tiny sculpture from there.

Vindhyagiri from far

Within a few minutes we were at the starting of hill, vindhyagiri. There are steps which leads people uphill.

Steps that leads uphill

Sunshine was so intense which made us to reach top of hill with much difficulty.

Dad !!

A view of Belagola

Visitors can have a splendiferous view of the belagola (: white pond) and chandragiri from here. ( atually pond is green in colour !)
There are many inscriptions carved on the rocks by jain saints.

Inscription under glass protection

Vadhegal basadi

Dad at vadhegal basadi

A tower

A distant veiw of vadhegal basadi

Beautiful carvings

Rock door

Inscription on Rock

Entrance of baahubali basadi

Baahubali from outer premise

View from basadi

A basadi of jain monk

Selfie with dad

Within a  minute ,we were in front of one of the largest monolithic sculpture : The mighty Baahubali !
The ravishing architecture !!!!

Monolithic baahubali : crown of jain cult

Baahubali was a legendary king who sacrificed everything to find himself !!

The place is so calm and best place to find oneself !!!
This place is a must visit place and i’m sure you will feel blessed here 🙂

View of vindyagiri from parking lot

We spent some of our time there and started back to home !
At the end of journey, odometer said me that ,it was a 305.1km ride which is my personal longest single day ride 🙂
Such a tremendous ride !
I really enjoyed it 🙂

“Ride for RESPECT”