Weekend Road Trip From Bangalore To Puttaparthi & Lepakshi

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Lepakshi Temple
Lepakshi Temple

Out of sheer curiosity and to meet my objective of going out of Bangalore at least once a month, I planned a trip to Puttaparthi and Lepakshi with a friend of mine. Puttaparthi is about 160 km’s from Bangalore. So it was a perfect place for a day trip.

This time of the year being summers, we left early in the morning. We thought of having breakfast on the way. But to our surprise, none of the roadside Dhabas were open till 9:45 AM and by then we had reached Puttaparthi.

The interesting thing about these Dhabas is that they all call themselves ‘Punjabi Dhaba’, which is dually written in Gurmukhi script. But when you stop by and ask for a menu, it is typically the local stuff like Idli, Dosa, etc. The road was not excellent, but it was not bad either.

Weekend Road trip from Bangalore

Weekend Road trip to Puttaparthi & Lepakshi Temple

Shivalinga at Lepakshi
Stone Shivalinga

By the time we reached Puttaparthi i.e. around 10:00 AM, we were very hungry. After a bit of struggle to park the car, we went to the only decent looking place to have breakfast. Though there were a lot of Nepali restaurants around, none of them seemed inviting enough.

Now, most of the guidebooks do not talk much about this place. Except that this is the place where Sathya Sai Baba lives. So, we tried asking people about the things that we can see around.

Puttaparthi Temple

We went to the temple, where there is a huge hall with a very ornate roof. This is the place where Baba gives ‘darshan’ to people twice a day for 15 minutes each. Apparently, you have to stand in a row for it for a few hours.

Anyway, the objective with which we had gone was to see how these ‘Spiritual Gurus’ manage to create a complete ecosystem around them. I find it incredible that they are self-sustaining and mostly everything is done through voluntary action and contribution.

The surroundings in Puttaparthi were not as appealing. It was like a normal small town on the outside.

Institutions & Museum

Pittaparthi is home to some huge educational institutes, including a medical college. All of these are run by Sai Baba and his devotees.

Another important place that we were told that can be seen is a museum which is called ‘Chaitanya Jyoti’. The architecture of the building was very oriental with lots of red and gold color used. It is like the typical structures that you find in Southeast Asia.

The museum, predictably, was about the life and times of Sai Baba, with lots of his videos and multimedia presentations. He is depicted as one of the Avatars and hence called ‘Bhagwaan’. The guide will tell you how he is better than all the earlier Avatars. The whole concept is very similar to what I saw a few days back in ‘Akshardham’ in Gandhinagar. However, this is on a much smaller scale.

The question that comes to mind after a visit to such places is, these people usually say that they are not affiliated with any religion. That they draw all the good concepts from all religions. But at the same time are they not trying to establish a religion of their own a la ‘Gautam Buddha’.

Giant Nandi stone statue
Giant Nandi stone statue

Lepakshi Village

We were done with Puttaparthi by 12:30 and there was nothing left to be seen. At least we could not gather that from people there, except the Darshan part that we were not too keen on.

Then I surfed through my Lonely Planet to see if there is anything close which can be visited. There was this small place called ‘Lepakshi’.  It has a famous Veerbhadra temple with a giant Nandi statue at the beginning of the town.

My closest association with the word was that all the Andhra Pradesh Emporiums are called ‘Lepakshi’. I was told this is the place where the art on black metal originated. I was hopeful of finding some artifacts there. Alas, it was a small village and the temple and the Nandi bull were the highlights of the place.

Lepakshi Temple

The temple at Lepakshi is stunningly beautiful. The intricate carvings always make me think, what a flourishing economy it would be when these temples were built. It was when people could engage themselves so deeply into the finer aspects of life.

For the first time, I saw a Nag coiled around a huge Shiva Linga and all this in the open, and not beneath a roof. There were several other forms of Shiva inside the temple, but this one is intriguing.

No wonder all the foreigners were climbing on top of it and getting their photographs clicked. As a Hindus, I found it disrespectful.

Temple Architecture

The temple had typical temple architecture with pillared corridors around the temple. The whole structure on square pillars all of which were carved said stories of the time when it would have been built. I can go and live there for some time, as there was something that I felt connected to. Something told me that I would come back here sometime.

After spending some time there, we started back for Bangalore and reached by 4:00 PM. And again we were hungry and not many options appeared on the way for lunch too.

Recommend you to read the following travel blog.

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Visakhapatnam’s Ramakrishna Beach

INS Kursura Submarine Museum on a Beach at Visakhapatnam

Train Ride to Araku Valley

6 COMMENTS

  1. Hi Anu,
    Was a good travelogue.
    What did u finally conclude from ur trip?Is the devotion of the people justified?Dont you think its just another means of minting money by captialising on peoples weakness??

    I bet you would have captured a lot of shots.Do share them sometime.

    Thanks

  2. What a wonderful trip. I always wonder what one learns about the people in a new place. Did you have some insights about the people? Come visit my blog.

  3. hey cool… i havent been to Pushpapathi but i have been to Lepakshi.. i remember the sorching heat… there was just one small eatery outside, we had lunch there. A rough bus journey, and sunflower farms all along… rocky lands soon turned into barren hot plains… !! Lepakshi temple complex had this amazing feeling of ruined and yet standing… wanted to be lost amongst its pillars.

  4. Hi Lavannya, Lepakashi was wonderful, and it seems that my trip to Puttaparthi happened because I was destined to go to Lepakshi as I had no plans of going there, its just that there was nothing interesting in Puttaparthi that we went to Lepakshi. And you are not missing anything by not going to Puttaparthi, its just another of so many self obsessed spiritual gurus’place or should I say palace…

    -Anu

  5. hi Anuradha,

    i’ve been to puttaparthi recently and enjoyed my visit throughly.

    i made an ‘eco-note’ about the ecosystem around puttaparthi, as this is my second visit here9the 1st being 10 years ago0, i found puttaparthi is greening significantly.

    i saw at least 10 avian species, 2 bats types, rhesus monkeys, squirrels, toad and fresh water shrimp in river chithravati. among the insects dragonflies are abundant and very little mosquitoes. i think the top predator in the ‘food-chain’ still exist!

    anyway, if have any ‘econote’ about puttaparthi and surrounding areas please share with me cheers,
    tan

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