Voyage 361

Hoysaleshwara temple Nandi Mandapa’s and the Temple complex: Nandi Mandapa's: To the other side of the temple to the east are two more entrances facing to the Dwara Samudra Lake and to both of these east doors are the Nandi Mandapa's built with huge Nandi (the Bull, an attendant of Lord Shiva) statues inside it, being majestic in appearance and beautiful in composition. The walls on this side are more or less plain with less number of sculptures and pillars holding the roof structure and pierced perforated window structures are placed similar to that of the Belur temple. Nandi Mantapa 1 The first Nandi statue from the north is of more importance and is more beautifully carved than the other. It has a plain mantapa with pillars and open to air without any walls, it doesn’t have a garbhagriha, but has model shrines on either sides of the Nandi mantapa. Friezes on the base of the Nandi Mantapa 1, beside it is the Nandi Mantapa 2 Side view of the Nandi Manta

Lakkundi - Brahma Jinalaya Temple: Next in the itinerary were the Brahma Jinalaya and the museum, which was just about 500m from the Kashivishwanatha temple. After spending enough time at Kashivishwanatha temple, we then moved towards the Museum, where the Brahma Jinalaya temple is also located. first look of Brahma Jinalaya Temple Archeological Museum: The Museum is worth a visit. Unlike Kashivishwanatha temple there is a ticketing counter here where one has to take tickets at the museum, it was 10Rs per adult and 25Rs for camera. The museum is undertaken from the Archeological survey of India and is pretty well maintained too. It has a lot of exquisite monuments and here again photography was banned. Brahma Jinalaya/ Jainalaya (Basadi): behind the museum is the Jain basadi which is perhaps the largest and oldest temple at Lakkundi today. An inscription found here reveals that the temple was built in 1007 AD by queen Attimabbe or Attiyabbe, wife of chief

Bagalkot Heritage Drive - Day 2 – Badami Group of Temples By 5.45 pm we left the Badami caves & started towards the Museum which was on the opposite side of the caves, it is around 1.5 km for us, but as per Google maps it is around 1km. Though it is only about half a km from the caves but there are no proper roads to reach here, Government has failed a bit here in claiming some land & protecting the road to these places, we had to struggle a lot to make way for our Innova, as the road is so narrow that even if there is another vehicle on the other side one of us must have to reverse the car back to the road, but luckily no other vehicle came in the opposite direction till we reached the fort gate. Also there are a few temples which reside inside the town with all the houses in the town surrounding the temples which has a history of over 1500yrs. I felt there should be a protected area around the temple at least to protect it from being encroached. Due to the roads bei