3 day trip to Bijapur, Aihole, Pattadakal and Badami. This was a trip through the ages covering various rock temples, rock-cut cave temples, tombs, palaces and mosques ranging from 4th century to 17th century. Aihole, Pattadakal and Badami has temples of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism all next to each other speaking of the secularism of ancient India.
Dates – 18th, 19th, 20th September 2018
Trip in detail –
- Bijapur – Day 1 – 18th Sept 2018
- Aihole – Day 2 – 19th Sept 2018
- Pattadakal – Day 2 – 19th Sept 2018
- Badami – Day 3 – 20th Sept 2018
Day 0 – 17th Sept 2018
Started from Bangalore at around 6:30 pm. Had dinner at a hotel near Chitradurga. Reached Bijapur at around 6:30am.
Day 1 – 18th Sept 2018 – Bijapur
Reached Bijapur at around 6 am. Searched few places for stay but then ended up going to Gol Gumbaz first. After that we decided to book a room in Hotel Basava Residency. Evening time we visited rest of the places and then stayed over at Bijapur.
Places visited – Gol Gumbaz, Ibrahim Roza, Malik-e-maidan cannon, Upli burz, Ali Adil Shah, Gagan Mahal and Shivgiri temple
Day 2 – 19th Sept 2018 – Aihole and Pattadakal
Started early morning from Bijapur at around 5 am. Reached Aihole at around 7:30 am. Its a small village built within the ruins of the ancient temples. Few of the houses were constructed within the temple complexes. These set of temples are grouped close by. We visited a few of them in the first half of the day and headed towards Pattadakal.
In Pattadakal all the temples are within one complex. So we quickly visited the temples and decided to go to Badami to search for a place to stay since we were tired. We stayed overnight at Hotel Mayura Chalukya.
Places visited –
At Aihole – Durga temple complex, Huchichimalli temple complex, Ravanaphadi, Meguti jain temple, Ancient Digambar temple
At Pattadakal – Pattadakal temple complex
Day 3 – 20th Sept 2018 – Badami
At Badami we got early morning at 6 am and decided to go to see the Bhuthanatha temple group and Agasthya lake. We reached the temple at around 6:30 am. The temple group was closed for visit at that time. But we were able to go to the Bhuthanatha temple and few places behind the temple because the lake bed was dry. We could not visit rest of the temples in this group.
After that we decided to see the cave temples on the other hill because they would be open by now. We saw the 4 rock-cut cave temples and were in awe at the sculptures and the fact that all the structures in each of these caves were built out of one monolithic rock with zero scope for error.
We came back to the hotel for our breakfast and took rest. After that we decided to visit the museum and a small trek along the northern hills. After the trek we came back to the hotel, packed up and left for Bangalore.
Places visited – Bhuthanatha temple and temple group, 4 cave temples, museum, trek through the northern hill.
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