Murdeshwar, Karnataka

A trip to Western ghats in Karnataka

Murdeshwar

We have been discussing for a trip to western ghats since ages and finally we made it only in the month of Dec'18. As we have known and seen this beautiful Murdeshwar shiva statue in many movies which is located very close to the sea, decided to visit this temple. Murdeshwar, famous for the world's second tallest Shiva statue, is a town in Bhatkul taluk of Uttar Kannada district in the state of Karnataka. Murdeshwar is another name of the Hindu god Shiva. The origin of the name "Murdeshwar" dates to the time of the epic Ramayana 

Our journey starts:

Most of us rely on google for everything, i am also not an exceptional:) so asusual checked for the best route to go to Murdeshwar from Bangalore and it suggested two routes 1.via Shimoga and another one via Davanagere to Murdeshwar. We decided to go with Davanagere as we read in many articles/blogs that the Shimoga road is not so good. Since the distance is about 500kms from Bangalore and it is going to be a long day driving, we started early morning at 5:15 AM. When we were nearing Tumukuru one of our friend(who also accompanied in this trip) suggested to have breakfast at a hotel which is very famous for Thatte idli. Yes it is Hotel Pavithra most of you might have known already. It was around 6:45AM but still the hotel was crowded and we had to wait for 5-10 minutes to get the seats.

I think it is ok to wait for few minutes if you really want to eat tasty and soft/fluffy idlies :)

It is not a big or posh hotel but a very normal average hotel where you can taste good idli. Trust me we really enjoyed idli here. 

Journey continues..

Soon after breakfast we continued our journey by following google maps. When we were nearing a place called "Hiriyur" the google map popped up a message saying " found a shortest route, would you like to proceed" we did not action on it and continued the drive.  we realised after an hour that google map had redirected us to Shimoga route automatically. I think this is what happening in our life as well. we always think and decide to do something but something else will happen. When something goes wrong or things not happening as we expected to happen, we should think everything has happened for good. Trust me it worked in our case. Just because we got rerouted to Shimoga we managed to go to Jog falls which was not in our itinerary though. The road is not so good but definitely not bad.

The first thing caught our eyes when we were entering jog falls.
Nothing can be compared with nature. 

Jog Falls

Best time to visit jog falls is during monsoon or just after monsoon. Probably July to October.             Since it is December there is not much water fall but still we were able to hear the roaring sound of water falls from such a longer distance.Since it is off season the crowd was very less and we spent not more than 30minutes just to take few clicks around this area and started our journey to Murdeshwar. Since this is located in the ghat section and got hit by the recent rain during October the roads were slightly damaged but still the driving was interesting.

If you are travelling to Murdeshwar via Shimoga remember there are no hotels after Shimoga so it is advised to plan accordingly. Distance from Jog falls to Murdeshwar is around 90kms, enjoyed driving on the hill section and finally we reached the destination in the evening as we planned. It was an amazing experience 

Stunning moment to see the world's second tallest lord Shiva statue from the 18th floor of the Murdeshwar temple gopuram.There is a lift operates from this temple entrance to go to the 18th floor of the gopuram to see the spectacular view of the 123 feet tall Shiva statue