A Trip to Halebid, Belur and Chikamaglur Part 3

On Sunday Feb. 8 we checked out our hotel after a late breakfast and took the road to Belur. The Hoysala Temple group there is in a some what larger town setting than at Halebid. We parked the car right outside the temple complex, left our shoes in the car and walked into the complex. We had realized that we would benefit from the words of a guide and once inside we were approached by a fellow asking if we wanted a guide. I asked him if he was a good guide and he did not immediately say he is the greatest, so we thought he might be OK. He also had a pin on his shirt pocket indicating that he was an "authorized guide" He turned out to be quite good. A fee of Rs 150 was collected by someone else and this was probably shared. We later gave him a tip as well. In the first picture above- he is the guy in the striped shirt. He took us to the Hoysala temple at the center of the complex first- this is apparently the oldest part. He told us about some of the other buildings as well- and said they are newer additions though they looked quite old. One thing we have noticed is that it is very difficult to judge the age of buildings that we have seen. There are buildings in Bangalore that look like they should be 150 years old, but then we see a date of 1936 or something. There was a large tower at the entrance to the complex with all sorts of Hindu gods on it- these are what we are used to seeing. He said this is newer and dates from the 1600's. Our main interest was the amazing carved stone decoration of the Hoysala period temple. He pointed out that it has 42 finely carved sculptures. 39 are female figures. The intricacy of the carving seems even more remarkable than that at Halebid! The temple is on a platform or "plinth" which has a sort of "star shape"- apparent typical of the 1100-1200 period. Like the one at Halebid, this has finely carved columns inside. two of these columns are of special note because they have carvings all over the surfaces. The decoration is remarkable! One guide book said that this temple is older than the one at Halebid and in less good condition, but we did not notice that at all. We did notice that the government has installed light fixtures all over the Halebid temple and this detracts from it. We also learned that while they installed all the lights, then never had them connected to a source of electricity!
After the main temple the guide showed us a tall sort of obelisk and said that it once had an oil lamp on top to provide light. He also showed us that one corner of the obelisk does not touch the ground. We walked around the complex for a total of about 2 hours and then headed back toward home in Bangalore. We stopped once on the return for a light lunch and the return trip took a total of 4 hours. On the return trip we saw a few interesting sights. In one picture we see a sort of tunnel formed over the road by some large banyan trees.
We have a couple other pictures showing traffic scenes. They basically show cars and trucks and buses all over the place- somehow they don't collide as often as it looks like they should!
It was a great trip to some fascinating sites!