Ekadas Rudra

In the series of little known places in India, this time I bring you Mangrauni, a non-descript village on the outskirt of a small district town of Madhubani in Bihar. What is has - Probably few villagers, a couple of temples and lot of ponds (waterbody). You see we don’t have lakes and tanks – we call them ponds or Pokhars or Talaabs. Even in Madhubani town, I counted 10, way back in 1983 and stopped the process. Who get what I mean, right! So, back to Mangrauni – it is this village that you find a temple called Ekadas Rudra Mahadev temple.

It is said that Shiva has eleven forms of Rudra and his mantra is – “Om namo sivay” but in this temple, it is eleven letter matra – “Om namo sivay, Om ekadas rudray” pertaining to 11 Rudra mentioned in Ekadas Rudrabhishek. It is said that listening to this, Kanchi seer said - “ if today Aadi Guru Shankaracharya were here, he would certainly enchant this mantra”. He is said have told - “this is the only Temple in the whole world of its kind”.  Reason is simple – it has all the eleven Rudra:

11 Shivalingas

• Mahadev
• Shiv
• Maha Rudra
• Shankar
• Neel Lohit
• Ishan Rudra
• Vijay Rudra
• Bheem Rudra
• Devdeva
• Bhavod Bhav
• Adityatmak Srirudra.

Ekadas Rudra is also one of the biggest Hindu festivals in Indonesia, observed every 100 years, last completed in May 1979. But if you look at the largest temple in the world – Angkor Wat, in Combodia, you can easily understand the reasoning.

A disputed story of carvings on the shivlingas needs proper historic and evidence based verification; nevertheless, I was mesmerized to see all those carvings of Bhagwan Ram, Bajrang Bali, sun, snakes, Sudarshan Chakra etc. We had reached the temple in the evening when it was time for avishek and aarti. The sloka chant during aarti is equally captivating. A divine and spell-bounding  mesmerizing experience indeed!

Banavasi trip details: Part I

27^th December 2010

While coming back from Shirdi, we stayed in a highway hotel on NH4 just after Pune, as we were tired of driving and wanted to prepare for along drive. We started in the morning around 9 AM for Banavasi. Road to Hubli on NH-4 was un-eventful, though it can get crowded in the mornings at some places near Pune before Shivapur. Guess, holidays had a role to play too!

From Hubli, there are three options to reach Banavasi

• Via Mundgod on NH4-SH69 (100 Km)
• Via Mundgod on NH63 –SH46-SH69 (104 Km)
• Via Yellapur – Sirsi on  NH63 – SH93-SH77  (139)

 After decent lunch as Garden Club restaurant on Pune-Bangalore road, and some asking around for directions from locals there, we decided to take Mundgod route via NH4-SH69.

Route: Hubli-Tadas-Mundgod-Malgi-Banavasi (View)

Roads are good, (generally double) except some broken parts after Tadas and Malgi. If you are taking this route, ask direction for Tadas after reaching Varur (14 KMs from Hubli) as getting direction on NH4 can be tricky as it bypasses all the towns. If you have GPS, it is easier. Would have been easier looking at the route to halt at Mundgod, considering that it was one of the places (Tibetan monasteries) we wanted to visit but lack or accommodation made us decide not to and head to Banavasi instead. After reaching Malgi which is around 55 KMs from Tadas, we depended on villagers for direction, which was surprisingly easy.  Beware – some GPS don’t work after Malgi, at least my Garmin didn’t as it failed to recognize the road! Damn!! L, defeats the purpose of why I bought this phone! Google maps and MapMyIndia maps were helpful though. Drive from Malgi was peaceful with good rural backdrop, couple of beautiful lakes to stop by. Reached Banavasi around 7 PM, a drive close to 10 hours and a total distance of 536 KMs.

We had called ahead to the tourist complex and took the direction from Banavasi entrance.  Though the direction was precise, we missed the entrance even though it had a huge gate and went straight to the temple. Needed the direction from villagers again and finally we reached the tourist complex. Looking at the route we took, it was easier than the route provided by the manager as it would have amount us to read boards in Kannada – difficult tasks, especially in dark. It was easier to ask for devasthana and then ask for guest house. After changing, we headed straightway to Khanavali for home cooked village food for dinner.

PS - After finishing the trip, I felt that taking Yellapur-Sirsi route via NH63-SH93-SH77 would have been better as the Sirsi-Yellapur route is good, would have taken the same time or less and has some beautiful waterfalls and Saharslinga too for a stop-over.  

Banavasi

Chaagadha bhogadhakkaradha geyadha nottiyalampinimpugalgaagaramaadha maanasare maanisar! amthavaraagi puttalenaagiyumeno theerdhapudhe? theeradhodam maridhumbiyaagi menkogileyaagi puttuvudhu namdhanadhoL banavaasidheshadhol”

wrote Pampa, eminent Kannada poet of the Kadamba era.

(It is a virtue to be born in Banavasi as a human being. If not as a human being, then at least one should be born as a bee or a cuckoo in the garden of Banavasi)

My visit to Banavasi was, how do I say – with least expectation, other than that we have a place to stay. Surfing the internet, looking at various blogs gave me some information and what to expect but it also managed to give us some fears as to what not to expect. Especially, when you are travelling with family and kids, these “don’t expect” things becomes an issue when some of them are priority for you.

But we were surprised to see the tourist home run by Village tourist council in association with an NGO (Travel Another India) and some government agencies. The caretaker and the facility manager was what a doctor would prescribe to the place – very helpful, resourceful and knowledgeable. Banavasi as a place was clean, friendly. Not that we don’t have our usual cribs – absence of what we call a decent place to eat (khanavali serves the food), very basic accommodation, no recreation, I can go on and on. But then, you visit a place like that, you set your expectation accordingly and Banavasi and tourist complex stood up for what they currently is. Off course, the pantry can improve, the courtyard can be cleaned, the outer open space can be “fixed” for some kind of children play area and with live vegetation but what I missed the most was the wardrobes in the rooms and with so many devices that we all carry – digital camera, pen drive, laptops, MP3 player, PSP and other digital entertainment, only one plug point in the room was a hindrance. We were able to manage as we had two rooms and an extension cord – expecting the expected J

Had been to the village market, as suggested by Mr Bramha Kumar, the complex manager, and was surprised to see how farm produce can be fresh and inviting. Guess, we have forgotten about it long time ago! We visited Yana, Sirsi, Sharsalinga, Mundgod etc during the trip and had made Banavasi as the centre of the trip, looking its strategic location.

Coming soon: Details of the trip and experience, stay tuned…

My wandering thoughts...

Finally, I got initiated in creating my blog! It is said that better late than never. As the name suggest, no specific thoughts or theme for this blog - what I will write here will be thoughts that is floating, some issues that I am pondering at and also share my experiences. 


Please be patient about the blog at it might go through many many revisions before it materialized. Bear with me as you have always...


Thanks