Whims published... It's not an expert's opinion, It's not an online diary, It's not a web journal... It is just my whims published

Prashi, Byre, Pujar and me visited MelukoTe last weekend. I faintly remember visiting this place during my high school days.

We had to travel by KSRTC bus, as Pujar was not confident enough to drive his newly bought Santro on the highway and the rest of us had done a ‘crash’ course in driving [pun intended]. There are very few direct buses to MelukoTe from Majestic. Reliable sources had suggested to catch a bus to ManDya and then any private bus from there to MelukoTe.

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We reached ManDya late and upon that we got to wait long for the bus to MelukoTe. The place is 35 kms from ManDya. After waiting nearly for an hour, a crazy thot of hiring 4 bicycles and peddling to MelukoTe occurred to us. This insanely crazy thot was proposed by Pujar and watered by me and Byre. Prashi had to drift towards the majority. Even the hot Sun failed to despise our enthusiasm. We went to a nearby bicycle shop and asked for 4 bicycles. The guy refused to give bicycles on rent to unknown people.

We had to drop the idea and resumed waiting for the bus. After a long wait, heavily crowded bus chugged in front. We decided to sit on roof of the bus! We had tried this once before in one of our previous trips and had enjoyed that journey. All climbed to the roof and played all monkey pranks on each other throughout the journey. We did not even bother to care for the reaction from the local fellow roof top travelers.

We reached MelukoTe around 2:30 PM. Thanks to the guy who refused to give us bicycles on rent, after all 35kms is not possible a distance to peddle! We visited the famous KalyaNi first. Many Kannada movie sequences and songs have been shot there near that KalyaNi. Then we marched towards the Yoganarasimha Swamy temple, climbing few hundreds of steps. We were lucky to get the darshan as the temple closed for lunch soon after we got the darshan.

We hogged in a pretty decent hotel. Then we visited famous Cheluvanarayana Swamy temple. Then we visited Raya gopura and Library & Sanskrit College.

Prashi said he came across a line of text while digging for the info about MelukoTe in net. It reads ‘MelukoTe is a town where time stands still’. Having experienced the serenity of the place, we all had nod to that statement. Indeed it is a place where time stands still!