Another ancient cave temple

After visiting the cave temple on bannerghatta road, I was on the look out for another serene temple. I have been hearing about the Gavi Gangadhareswara temple near basavanagudi, for quite some time now. This sunday we decided to visit it.
It is one of the ancient cave temples in India and currently a preserved heritage site. King Kempegowda, the founder of Bangalore, built the cave temple carved out of a monolith stone. It is said that sages Gautama and Bharadwaja performed penace here. The temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva. There is a small stream of water flowing in the cave at all times.
Gavi = cave, ganga = the stream of water is believed to be ganga. Hence the name Gavi Gangadhareswara.
There are idols of several other dieties inside the cave. Some of them are rare forms of goddesses like Agni and Brahmi.
There seem to be several passages in the cave. It is said that one of them leads to kashi and another one to Shivaganga.
Another specialty about the temple is the phenomenon that occurs on Makar Sankranthi day every year. A ray of sun passes into the south facing cave and passes between the horns of nandi and then disappears after touching the Shiva linga. Local people throng the temple premises that day hoping to catch a glimpse of the rare occurance.
A fantastic and memorable visit !!
Till my next temple visit... keep watching this space for more....

Care a little

“We make them cry those who care for us
We cry for those who never care for us
And we care for those who will never cry for us”

And at the end we are alone…
Someone put down the complexity of human relationships in simple words. But then they had the time to observe the complexity. In today’s world where everyone is running along with the clock, we can say

We don’t have time to care for those who cry for us
We don’t have time to cry for those whom we care about

But if we are at least aware that once in a while we need to stop and let the clock run ahead while we catch up with some precious moments then I think we would have made up for all the lost time.

A Cave Temple

Weekend brings the thoughts of travel. But with security being an issue these days, we were looking for some place which is with in the city limits yet away from crowds. We came to know of a cave temple in Hulimavu which fitted the bill. This temple is on the way to Meenakshi temple on Bannerghatta road. So we drove down on a Saturday evening having collected enough information about the way from various sources. The road is not a well laid one and you get the feeling that you are driving towards a village.

The Ramalingeswara cave temple is 2000 years old. It is said that sages used to perform penance inside the cave. The main deities are Lord Shiva and Rama, Sita and Lakshmana. There is also an idol of Lord Krishna. The entrance as you can see on the side leads to a cave. Anyone whose height is more that 5 ft 3" needs to bend as long as they are inside. Even at the entrance there are stone slabs which may hit your head if you are not careful. Every first Sunday of the month, satyanarayana puja is performed here.

On top of the cave there is a footprint which is supposed to be that of Hanuman. I do not know the story behind it, but I will find out some day. The locals say that the cave was a part of a hill which now disappeared thanks to ‘urbanisation’. Also the land which belonged to the temple is now used by a school.

When we were inside the priest was performing the last puja of the day. The power went off and the cave was lit only by the diyas near the deities and the harathi. It gave an eerie look to the whole temple.

A transquil and well kept place. A memorable trip.