0 Itgi and Kuknur

After lunch, Advesh and I continued our journey... he spoke about various other historical monuments in Gadag district as I drove on NH63. At Bannikoppa we turned off the highway and took the narrow country road. A short drive and we were at Itgi, I parked the car under a tree opposite Itgi Panchyat Office and walked to the temple which is about 50m away. The temple complex was strewn with stone slabs of various sizes in various stages of work. A full scale restoration activity was in progress.

Carvings at this temple are intricate and detailed.

One should see this temple with their own eyes. This well is completely renovated with new stones. The structure looks nice but the water...

This small structure is a temple, there are totally nine such temples but only two or three have Shiva Lingas in them. Rest all seem to be vandalized.

This is the front yard of an incomplete temple.

We spoke to one of the workers, actually he's skilled at carving out stones. He admitted that what ever they did was just rough work and they could never come close to what artists of the past created. He himself was so appreciative about the hollow carvings with minute details etched into them. It was around 4PM and the group leader was waking up his team members from their siesta, asking them to gt back to work. Most of them were reluctant to open their eyes...

Having covered most of the temple complex, we decided to head towards Kukunur, which is about 8km from Itgi.

This is inside Kukunur temple. Since this is an important pilgrim center of Koppal district, the main temple is renovated with oil paint, distemper, ceramic tiles and steel rails.





We spent about 15 minutes looking around, actually there's not much to see. We headed back towards Lakkundi. I dropped off Advesh there and then drove back towards Dharwad. Overall it was not a trip I really enjoyed ...possibly because of the humid weather of the day.

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Detail: Itgi and Kuknur

0 13 Day trip - Day One and Day Two

February 1996, Gulli and I.

We left Bangalore early morning, on my Hero Honda Splendor, stopped just before Tumkur at Kyatsandra for breakfast at Ravi Idli Hotel. We rode pretty slow, wanted to have a safe journey. NH4 traffic is known for notoriety. At Chitradurga we left NH4 and took NH13, heading towards Hospet. This road was even worse, both edges were eaten away, foot deep ditches. We cannot expect truckers to go off the road for a bike. At times we used to get stuck behind loaded trucks moving at ox-carts pace. At times the terrain was desert like... barren and parched stretches of open land. We stopped for lunch at a road side dhaba. We were about 10km from Hospet, to our left we saw a temple tower. We decided to explore the place, took the narrow dirt track leading to the temple ruins. The architecture was Hoysala style. There was a village close by we met few locals; some sleeping, some studying, some chatting and some gambling too... multipurpose utility. We spent about an hour and then moved on...



We checked into KSTDC Lodge close to TB Dam, the bathroom did not have light! We dumped our bags, freshened up and went to TB dam. We saw the sun go down into the reservoir and then we came down to the dam gardens. The music fountain was playing, just like the one I'd seen in Bangalore.

The next morning, we left to Hampi. We went to Virupaksa temple first, bought coconuts from this little shop and paid our respect to the Gods inside.


We went exploring more ruins next to river Tungabhadra, it was warm now and in this rocky terrain it gets hot pretty fast. We met this little fellow playing on the rocks and ran to his mom as soon as he saw us...


We had breakfast in one of the small eateries on the temple street. I think we had churmari, bajji and tea. We went sightseeing... we saw many art students paint the ruins, they seemed to do a pretty good job.


That's Ugra Narasimha, look how his eye-balls are popping out


We kept moving fast from one spot to another trying to find shaded places. We aere amazed at this well but did not have the sense to click few more snaps.


The last stop for the day was the music hall and the stone chariot. We got a chance to touch the chariot. That's our guide showing us how we could hear music in these stones. We did hear different tunes. I remember the guide telling us that back then when kings ruled the land, music and dance concerts used to b held here and the music played here could be heard a kilometer away. Our guide explained us in detail with great patience.



We had seen just a fraction of Hampi. I cam back here in 2003 and then again some time 2005 and I'm yet to see the place fully.

If you ever plan to visit Hampi, see to that you go in a small group and start early in the day. That way may be you can see the place in 3 days.

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Detail: 13 Day trip - Day One and Day Two