Melkote Visit

8-Oct-2006

We went to Melkote today. I decided to play it safe - and engaged a cab from the nearby New India Travels. Pretty cool! (I mean the trip as well as the weather). The driver Nagaraj was a pleasant guy and could talk in Tamil too. We left at 6.40AM and as usual, circumambulated the 17th Cross Ganapathi temple and were on the way soon. We were in Melkote around 10.15 and went directly to the Narasimha Sannathi.

We went in the Bangalore - Mysore road and took a right turn after Maddur towards Melkote (also called Thirunarayanapuram). (It is really surprising to note that there is a route to Hassan / Sarvanabelehola from here. I thought we had to take a different route for that. Come to think of it, when we went to Sugganahalli the last week, we were surprised to see signs towards Melkote. Should look at a map!). The journey was absolutely fabulous - with some heavy rains now and then and very cool. As Melkote is at an elevation, the hilly path added to the excitement.

We got off the car in the bus stand. Actually, as we were going up the steps (believed to be 400), we saw another place where a bus and a couple of cars were parked almost at the top. But, we could not figure out how to go there in the car. The driver just passed it off saying that the road was not good enough to go up. I suspect if he really knew about it.

As Prahlada took a pilgrimage, he reached this place and Vishnu appeared before him as Narasimha again. There is a place where the Lord's feet are there (actually it is an open window and care is required) and a passage leads from there to a cave (we were told so -we could not see the cave) where Prahlada is supposed to have undertaken a Tapas.

We went to the 'Vimanam' of this very old temple and had a very good view of the town. We had one of the temple employees, Ramiah explaining things to us about the 'Vishnu Paadam' etc. Really a divine experience.

Lord Narasimha was very impresive and having developed a recent affinity for Lord Narasimha, my wife was very thrilled to see the deity. Here the lord is alone and there is no Thayar. Anyway, Prahalada (and probably Dhruva) is something special for him and he did not mind going alone to help him or see him, I guess.

On way down, we had some tender coconut (we forgot to take water bottle with us) and saw a small accident: a boy rolled a few steps. Fortunately, not a major one.

My wife wanted to distribute some sarees to the people asking for alms on the step - but had forgotten to take the bag from the car. Fortunately, she found two old ladies near the ground and quickly took and distributed the sarees to them from the car. (I wonder if they could really use those sarees especially while asking for alms. Something to be verified the next time).

There is a Mutt opposite the Narasimha temple and we had a quick dharshan of the deity. We wanted to see the Saligrama. The person there said Rs 10 first and we were OK. Then he said, Rs 10 per Saligrama and there were 5. We said OK again. But then, he said that it would take time - so we left.

The car took us to the main temple - around 11.30 or so.

Really a 'big' temple. A lot of shilpas are unfortunately had broken arms. We had good dharshan of the main deity (Thiru Narayana) as well as the 'Sella Pillai', the Uthsavar. There is also the 'Beebi Nachiar' (who goes by the name 'Thulukka Nachiar' in South, especially Trichy) at the feet of the Uthsavar, who is supposed to have fallen in love with this beautiful God!

The archaka asked us about our plan for lunch and then gave us the coupons for the free lunch (is there a really free lunch? Seems to be -- but wait.. we did not want it to be free!) in Jeer's ashram just behind the temple.

After a wait of about 45 minutes, we had a simple but a very good lunch. It consisted of rice, a kootu, sambar and butter milk. We were also told that every day they serve 30 (or 32) heads and the coupons are given by the temple archakas. We can opt to participate in it and the expense would be Rs 500 (or more) for just one day or Rs 1100 (or more) for one day every year. Since that day happened to be my son's Hari's birth day (star based), we paid Rs 1,200 and chose Sep 21 as the date.

So, time to return. With a lot of pleasant memories and a feeling of punya earned, we started our journey back. It was again a good trip back - only the driver ended up getting into Mandya town (wow...how many sugar-cane carts).

We were home around 5PM. We totally covered 312 ("oh...oh...your house number, saar") KM and it was Rs 5.25 per km PLUS Rs 150 as driver allowance and some tips.

Let us wait for His next call!


A lot of sites talk about this temple and a web search could yield them. For example, look here that has some very good photographs too.