Badami Cave temples are man made rock cut temples built in North Indian Nagara Style and South Indian Dravidian style. Badami was the capital of early Chalukyas until eight century is in between mountains and lakes. The cave temples are cut out of the mountains.

You can see the town lake in this picture and also a temple near by. On the top of the picture you can see brown mountains. Cave temples are carved out of it.

All around the city you can see temples. There are small temples on the mountains and rocks that surround the town.

Even though there are many temples, Badami is known for its ancient cave temples carved out of the sandstone hills above. There are four temple caves. The temples look simple compared to any other Chalukya styled temples. Read the rest of this entry »

A very close Kodava friend of mine got married recently. I am planning to write series of posts on Kodava marriage rituals. This is first one of the series. Kodavas are a warrior community and their wedding rituals involve symbolic warfare. This ritual of cutting banana shoots is to show respect to maternal family. There will be 3 sets of such cuttings ( 3,3 and 7 cuts)
1. In respect of present bride’s maternal family.
2. In respect of previous bride’s (in present brides maternal side) maternal family
3. In respect of present groom’s maternal family
Read the rest of this entry »

It was during my travel back from Finland. I had an Indian doctor as my neighbor in flight. As usual we started talking about India, politicians and travel. Then later we realized both of us are from Bangalore and we both are Kannadigas but chatting in English. Then we continued our conversations in Kannada about castles & forts in Scotland etc. That is when he told me “namma chitradurgada kote munde avenu illa biDi” roughly translates too “The castles or forts of Scotland are nothing in front of Fort of Chitradurga“. That is when I got really curious about the fort. Until then I had heard about it from the Film Nagarahavu and from the legendary story of Onake Obavva.

In the picture above you can see one of the mega entrances to the fort. There are five walls visible today. Each wall has a mega gate. This is one of them. two other fort walls are lost inside the new Chitradurga city.

This time when we started planning our North Karnataka trip I made sure to Include Chitradurga. I have not been to Scotland but this for is just breath taking. I have not seen any other fort as defensive as this. Chitradurga Fort is also called as Kallina Kote (stone fort), Ukinna kote (fort of steel), Yelu Suttina kote (Fort of seven walls). It has 19 gateways, 38 posterior entrances, a palace, many temples, a maTa, a mosque, granaries, oil pits, four secret entrances and water tanks. Read the rest of this entry »

Bijapur capital city of Adil Shah dynasty is famous for Gol Gumbaz and Ibrahim Rauza which inspired Taj Mahal (Yes you read right. It is said that the design for the Ibrahim Rauza served as an inspiration Taj). The weather is normally hot and dusty, hence the best time to visit would be winter (Oct-Jan). For any traveler first stop in Bijapur would be Gol Gumbaz.

Gol Gumbaz is the mausoleum of Adil Shah 1. Structure consists of massive square block of 160ftx160ft. Its covered by the massive dome of 124 ft in diameter. Its the second largest pre-modern dome in the world (after the dome of Hagia Sophia). The four corners of the dome has corner towers. The corner towers also has steps to reach the top of square block.

Read the rest of this entry »

Most of you would have read about how far the new Bangalore International Airport is and how boring the journey is. But have you noticed Fort of Devanahalli on the way to Airport? Its visible from the high way if you are watchful enough. I always wanted explore it but never did. But this time on my regular visit to Nandhi Hills I made sure to stop and visit the Fort.

The fort as such is not very big but looks beautiful and still is in good condition. The fort was built by Mallabairegowda in 1501 and then went into the hands of Mysore. Its more famous as the birth place of Tippu Sultan.

Read the rest of this entry »