Kotilingeshwara

The urge to see the cultural diversity of India and visit places which are popular and famous for its uniqueness, led us on the way to Kotilingeshwara.

Kotilingeshwara is famous for the 108 fit high Shivalinga and giant Nandi sculpture, the unique edifice is biggest in world. It is situated in kammasandra village, in Kolar district of Karnataka. The place is also known for largest number of Shivalingas kept at one place.

There are 90 lakhs shivalingas of various sizes at the time we visited the place, as told by the pujari over there, but he told the target is to keep 1 crore Shivalingas.

Bike Ride:

The place is approximately 100 km from Bangalore city. The best thing is that the road to Kolar is a six lane National highway 4, and riding a bike on this newly built road is really awesome. We were going full throttle nonstop till Kolar.

The thrill of going at 95 – 100 kmph speed cannot be explained, especially when it’s a straight nicely built roadway where flower plants on the broad dividers seen vacillating as if dancing on the sweet humming sound of cold wind mixing with hot engine emissions.

The clear blue sky with small patches of white clouds passing over the head and the sudden view of unparalleled landscape take the mind to utter calmness…. unless and until you turn your head slightly and find your helmet glass blowing away by huge force of coming wind.

It happened once when my friend’s goggles flew away when he turns slightly and it took some 2 minutes for me to bring my bike from 100 to zero speed. The goggles was collected but the serenity was lost. We had started by 8:30 in the morning without breakfast but the hunger of food was filled by the joy of ride.

We stopped at Kolar for the direction. A person suggested going via Avani and we left the highway and moved toward Avani. On the way we saw cheek Tirupati (small Tirupati), we stopped there for a while and then moved toward Kotilingeshwara, after 10 km we reached Kammasandra village.

The sculpture of big Shivalinga was clearly visible from far as we reached Kotilingeshwara.

We went inside the temple by paying Rs.10 per head as entry fees, the worst thing was that the camera was not allowed inside, so we had to put it back inside the bag, but we took some snaps to show our courage.   After seeing the Koties of Shivalingas we searched for the food. It was lunch time and we found a Dhaba named Aishwarya where we had food.

Kolar Gold Field:

We asked the people for the KGF route and thought why not to see it if we had already gone there. We reached KGF in another half an hour. A different kind of black plateau seen as we entered KGF after enquiring we come to know that that was Gold mine that closed some 10 years back. After going closer we saw very old but giant metallic structures which might be used for the underground lift. It was holiday so we didn’t find any body at the gate and returned back. We didn’t see any glorious thing but a sense of pride was there inside us as we were returning from a place of great historical significance which has linkage with long back history of Indus valley civilization.

We cherished the same highway ride while returning and reached home by 6 o’clock in the evening.