A trip out of nowhere

Just a short weekend and am thinking about my travel plans. Sometimes an unplanned getaway gives a way new perspective. So where did i plan to oh rather not plan and take the trip this weekend. Guess you would as well want to hear this.

Have you recently taken a overnight train ride and thought that you really missed the train journey which you had probably done when you were a child. These days we rather take out our car when we want to and drive out of the city. But this time i somehow convinced myself to take a journey on the rail road.

The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it. And i have rather missed quite for long to not get on board this time.

And the final stop for me was a small temple town Badami famous for its rock cut structural temples. 

A bit of history says that Badami is also named as Vatapi after a famous demon who was killed by sage Agastya and later also was the capital of the early Chalukyas. The Chalukyas did experimentation with temple architecture and came up with group of monuments around this place which have been designated as World Heritage Sites. (Badami Cave Temple - Aihole - Patadkkal)

These places have historical relevance to our epic Ramayana as well. Quite a bit of interesting stories can be unearthed around this place.

I read about them and the same morning took off to see these places and can you guess what i hired, a Autorick to go around for the day. The overall distance covering these two sites was totally around 50KM . I coudn't have been happier with the view of the greenery around and the earthy smell. The fresh air on my face and the wind blowing through my hair fanned my imagination to a ocean of exultation.

For some of you looking at these monuments might be a really boring affair. But rather there is lot to learn here from the history of these sites. Especially this place speaks about innovation in architecture and experimentation of ideas. Aihole has lot of circular perimeters to its structure compared to Pattadkal where you can see a fusion of ideas from South and North India. The fusion and exploration of art, ideas seemed way ahead of recent times where we still see divide between caste and creed. The architectural moldings, bracket design inside and out are for your eyes only. Culturally we as a nation are so profound that i realized we really forget to credit our rich and strong history .

So did this interest you enough if not then scroll down to see a bit more of the Badami Cave temples which rather awestruck my imagination.

The huge earthen wall cliff sandstone formation with caves beside the agastya theertha is a different form of beauty. The 4 caves feature the structures of lord shiva and vishnu, and the access to each cave is through a narrow stair. You see the dance forms of the sculptures inside which can blow your mind off.





I gazed at the huge wall sitting right in front of me for quite some time. There is no way i can climb it but you always start building yourself from the rock bottom and aspire to reach there. Its important to stand through life as a rock and find the balance of holding on and letting go.

I saw tourists taking pictures in crazy ways trying to capture the whole monolithic rock in one frame but however you try to capture your photograph it will remain the same telling us to be a little more boulder. These rocks and sculptures have recorded the events occurred at that time, its a different vocabulary and we need to learn how to read them. So this seemed to be a journey with big rocks to climb, historical architecture to trip over & Milestone to mark where i have been.

Here is me, a first time blogger sharing my experience captured through my lens. Hope that my thoughts echo until i see you again.

I titled it as "A trip to nowhere" because Architecture is inspirational but by itself it means nothing.