Mind Blogging. Mind Boggling.

Belur Halebidu- Getting there, and what lies therein

We set out on a road trip to Belur Halebidu - 240 kms west of Bangalore- on a road trip. Weather was co operative, but the innards of the car were not. A wheel alignment issue arose 100 km into the journey- While we bore westward towards Hassan district, the car if left to its own would have gone to Mysore, which is south of Bangalore. In other words, the steering wheel was tilting leftward. Now this gave the car an unnerving wobble- causing us to limit ourself to 60 km. The road was the best highway I have driven on*, but unfortunately we had to live life in the slow lane, and thus I could not play "Life in the fast lane" by The Eagles on the car stereo.

Belur and Halebidu, Hoysala temples, have been recently crowned UNESCO world heritage sites. They were Capitals of the Hoysala kingdom. Interesting apocryphal story- Boy named Sala studying with guru and classmates, Attack by marauding tiger, Guru shrieks "Hoy" which means "strike", Sala bravely strikes and kills the tiger with sword, and grows up and forms the Hoysala kingdom, which takes his nickname. They should name companies this way, today, after some apocryphal story of the founder. Anyway Hoy!Sala has a millennial seeming exclamation mark in the middle of name, also, like a social network handle or something.

The empire flourished between 10th and 14th century, spread across entire Karnataka, and segued into the Vijayanagara Empire.

Marvellous sculpture work 

Marvelous sculpture work on display at both sites. The sculptors seem to have wielded the stone like clay. Below is probably the piece de resistance.


Apart from the god-related sculptures, which is probably common temple fare (leaving quality aside), interesting thing was that there was a lot of work depicting life of the plebs- a hunter, a trader with his weighing scales, women with 600 hair styles in various sculptures across the Belur (gender sterotypes here, but its 1000 years ago so please excuse brave young Hoy!Sala and his descendants).



Below are walls lined with seven rows of sculptures - bottom most is elephants for strength, second is lions for bravery, fourth is horses for speed, (strength + bravery + speed = Hoy!Sala).  Third and fiftth are general artist swag in the form of curly patterns. Sixth is scenes from Ramayana and Mahabharata, seventh is general war scenes, eight is swans, and so on. Top most row is the life of common man, in the Hoy!Sala times. On the right, is further general life- pleb woman drying her hair (not royalty, not divine or anything- just a lay person).

The pillars are also a highlight, too. Much elaborate work. See below.

                                                                      Whattapilla!

Farmative experience 

We drove (at our enforced gentle pace ) through roads on either side of which lay the verdant farmlands of Hassan district. We saw lots of crops, all identified by agri expert D, and we covered all parts of a basic meal- rotis made of Maize and ragi, Arar ki daal, and Ladies finger curry. We also later inspected Ginger and Chillies, to add a dash of spice. Hope to cement these learnings and thus have more fruitful road trips in the future, by gazing intelligently at the crops. Also, Interstellar connect below- Okra and Maize are the last crops to survive on earth. I don't know when the blight is coming, but these pictures with Ragi and Arar ki daal could get famous later. 

Self drive and VR section 

Since there has been a throwback to 12th century architecture and to farming, both ancient vocations, this para is to set right the balance of the ages in this post. Further, allows me to put Self drive and VR in the title, as a classic click bait or reader bait for insecure readers (such as me on many days) who want corporate/megatrends gyaan in everything they read.

During the highway drive (my first highway drive in 10 months)- I really felt the need for self drive. Driving on highways is fairly mechanical- no gear changing, limited direction changing- just gotto drone on and on at a constant speed with limited need for manual interventions. And the roads are smooth. In India, while there is chaos is the city, self drive can probably first take off on the highways.

And VR. Well, now that I've visited B-H, I really want to re visit some parts of it - the wall near the Southern gate of the main Halebidu temple, with the seven rows. I am especially interested in the pleb life. But it's 250 km away! I want it in my VR goggles. VR goggles could also have a guide, built in. India tourism could take it up big time- especially maybe as a bait for foreign tourists since we want to ratchet up that number anyway. I'll probably tweet it to them just now.

KA tourism FTW