Moodbidri : Thousand pillers temple

Thousand Pillars temple this is a large granite temple built in 1430 A.D. which one a marvelous magnificent place of worship of the Jains. The main entrance of the thousand pillar temple, which faces the east, opens onto a wonderful 15 meter tall monolithic pillar called Mahastamba in front of the doorway.

The temple boasts of a valuable collection of jewel-encrusted metallic images of Jain tirthankaras, and superb monolithic columns in the Jain tradition, each with a different carving. The pillars of this basadi are decorated with carvings typical of Vijayanagara style.

There is inscriptional evidence of the 3 stages of construction on the walls of the Main Building. The Main Building, which houses the idol of the deity, is the most beautiful part of the temple. The Bhairadevi Mantapa is the most ornate part, which has 48 pillars with beautiful carvings on them.

The Manasthambha, is a sacred pillar of the Jains, and thus is found only in Jain temples. After the 3 stages of construction got complete, the local people attributed the construction of the Mantapa also to the wife of King Bhairava (Nagala Devi), and thus the Mantapa came to be known as Bhairadevi Mantapa.

The idol of Chandranatha Swamy is a 9 feet solid Panchaloha idol, which is one of the biggest Panchaloha idols in South India. The Manasthambha, is a solid structure of over 50 feet, which happens to be one of the tallest sacred pillar of Jains in South India.

The temple has 3 stories-the ground floor, 1st floor and the 2nd floor. The ground floor has the 3 main parts of the temple on it, i.e., the Main Building, the Bhairadevi Mantapa and the Manasthambha. On the 1st storey of the temple, there are statues of 2 main Theertankaras,Parshvanatha and Suparushuva.

What is fascinating though is that all the 24 Theertankaras have been carved on one panel on this storey. The 2nd storey has more than 300 miniature crystal statues of Theertankara Stone slabs and copper sheets have been used for the roofing of the temple.

An astonishing fact of the temple is that, if one takes a close look at the pillars, one will notice that the pillars are adorned with the carvings of Hindu Gods and Hindu mythological characters. The outer base of the outer wall of the Bhairadevi Mantapa has a running panel of carved miniature unusual figures, like those of Camel and Dragon.

History has it that the merchants of Moodbidri had trade relations with China and the Middle East. As such, they were quiet fascinated by the Chinese and Middle Eastern traditional symbols like Camels and Dragons. That is the reason why they are found etched on the running panel of a Jain temple.

Amedikallu

Amedikallu is considered to be one of the toughest in Karnataka which is the height around 1400mt above the sea level & it is one of the biggest & significant peaks in Charmadi range.

I had seen this place a few years back and though had scaled this place every time nature has something new to give us, though I had seen this before I was initially hesitant and thinking twice on going but for my friend I agreed finally, 

Saturday morning I left early to join the team we reached Naravi and hired a jeep to reach Sishila village, one of our teammate had arranges lunch at his relative's house, so we had a good lunch and started from that place.

The initial was through a dense forest but the trial itself was pretty wide, we walked for almost one hour and every body were tired may be heavy lunch and afternoon sun brought in the fatigue.

Leaving the dense forest behind we entered grass land which continues till 3 stones (Dikkels).The monolithic peak is almost 90-degrees, one need to go around in a spiral to reach the peak and this part of the trek is through a very very dense vegetation and narrow trail which probably becomes waterfall during monsoon.

Hunting walk…

The sun was beating down on us mercilessly; because of high temperature our speed lessened, every step became a task, but our aim was to reach the peak before it got dark, we couldn’t watch Sunset at peak but we were able to see its beauty on the way. Finally when we reached the peak it was evening 7.30.

Spectacular view of Amedikallu range.

After resting for few minutes our job was to find water source nearby, a ten min walk on the other side we found a stream and decided to halt there for the night, a small camp fire had very light dinner and all of us retired for the night, the exhaustion the heat had its toll all were fast asleep .

Making Hot Tea 

The name Amedikallu is a combination of two words: Ame - Turtle and dikkel - Tulu word for Stove. Amedikallu has a huge monolith at the top which appears like a giant turtle and 3 huge stones which give an appearance of a stove.

We woke-up early morning &finished our morning activities. Our Team made refreshing Lemon-Tea, later we had Rice- Dal for morning breakfast. We didn’t get to see Sun-rise because of thick clouds on the mountain

We packed neatly & started to climb final rocky steep peak.The last 5 minutes was great adventure with little risky climbing, finally we could catch the clouds on ‘Amedikallu’ peak; we spent some time, enjoyed the surrounding scenery, and got sufficient photos. After a quick photo session we started to climb down.

On our way back it started raining, we really enjoyed the rains all our exhaustion and tiredness disappeared it was like a blessing from the heavens a good shower to make us fresh again, like the mountains were happy too with our visit and were giving us a good farewell to come back again.

Merthi Betta

Merthi Betta was always on my mind it had a strange kind of attraction, I had seen this mountain when I had gone to visit my friend in ‘Kallugudda’ four years back and we had trekked to Hornadu from his place and I had seen this majestic mountain, we decided to go to this place on our next trek unfortunately due to lot of disturbances in this area we couldn't make it.

January 2007 our Udupi YHA had planned a trek to this place, it was like dream come true and i immediately joined the two day trekking program, we had our lunch at a place Basrigatte village parked our vehicles at a temple, there was a guide who was supposed to take us but some how he didn't turn up finally we found another local who agreed to guide us, later we hired a jeep and started our journey into the wild.

We had to get permission from the estate which we had to enter, we left our jeep and entered the estate, the guide took us to a natural cave which was in the thick forest the cave also had good stories evolved around it which the guide enlightened us with, we spent some time in the cave and continued our journey.

By evening we found a flat ground in-between two mountains and our guide suggested that we halt for the night there, he gave us some guidelines as to reach the top and the guide left us.

Adiga sir who was heading our team went to get permission from the estate again to use their water and halt in their area, so we had many groups which split to collect firewood one for water from estate and one to build the camp fire and some settled to watch the sunset,

Adiga sir took the initiative to cook and we had a splendid dinner.Next morning with new spirit we started to the peak of Merthi. For the next 1hour walk was fantastic with clouds and great scenery, everyone was shivering though we very having a brisk walk because of the cold wind,

finally we reached the peak & spent some time we could see unending mountain range clouds sailing over a very spectacular view, and we returned back, while returning we found a different route with help of a local boy.

On the way back we found many small waterfalls on this different route End of this trip was a little tragic as one of my friends from Mysore Anirudh fell down 20ft down our final steps to Horanadu and he had to rest for six months to recover.One more beautiful trip with some nice memories plus sort of bad moments added to my list.

Photos by-Ananth Udupi